


The Graves We Dig Ourselves

by Neutralchaos, preserumping



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Aphrodisiacs, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Car Accident, Character Turned Into Vampire, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Past Character Death, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, There is a Glory Hole, it's a vampire fic so you do the math on that, low key suicidal steve rogers, milkyway porn, steve has zero self preservation instinct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-04 22:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17906474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neutralchaos/pseuds/Neutralchaos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/preserumping/pseuds/preserumping
Summary: “You look scared,” the vampire purred. “Don’t be. Why don’t you invite me in?”“I―” Steve started, and then promptly forgot what it was he wanted to say. He couldn’t look away from that gaze if he even had the will left to try. There was something familiar about the rest of his face, but that didn’t seem important now. Steve’s thoughts grew fuzzy at the edges, leaving him standing like a deer in headlights with his pepper spray still poised in the air.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my addition to the 2018 Stucky AU Bang! 
> 
> Huge, endless thank yous are owed all around:
> 
> \+ To my artist, [Choasdraws](http://chaosdraws.tumblr.com), who had to scrape together something to draw out of the mess of a draft I sent back in November, bless them. You can find their art in chapters 1 and 2. 
> 
> \+ To my beta reader, [VenusMonstrosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenusMonstrosa), who suffered and toiled and made this readable, and who I can trust not to have sugar-coated anything. 
> 
> \+ To the bang slack and all the wonderful, supportive people on it. I would try to name names, but I know I will inevitably miss someone because keeping track of slack DMs is a nightmare. I know off the top of my head that [nightmaresinwintah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmaresinwintah) and [girlbookwrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlbookwrm) got a peek at the early drafts and gave me invaluable inspiration and crit, but there were so, so many more who read snippets or just put up with my whining on [twitter](https://twitter.com/stevebuckynat). 
> 
> \+ To the mods, and all the hard, thankless, unpaid work they did to run this thing. I made all these friends along the way because of you guys. Thanks for running the shit out of this bang!
> 
> This work is complete, and comes in at just around 30k spread over 6 chapters. I will be updating every other day until March 6th.
> 
>  
> 
> Quick disclaimer for the first chapter only: there is a scene that could be considered dubiously consensual due to supernatural elements, but it’s interrupted before it gets past heavy petting. There are no other consent issues in this work.

There was a man staring at Steve on the bus.

It was just past two in the morning, and a cold rain drenched the city. The few other occupants of the bus trickled off stop by stop, weary-eyed or tangled up in one another. Before long, the bus grew deserted and silent but for the rumble of the engine and the tires on the road.

The man's eyes never left Steve. He was leaning against the railing by the rear doors, and had been since Steve boarded. As far as Steve could tell, he hadn’t so much as moved since. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end even as he avoided meeting the man’s stare. From chanced glances, he could tell the guy was big― tall certainly, broad-shouldered and almost definitely heavily muscled, though it was hard to tell for sure under his heavy trench coat. His hair was dark and long enough to frame his pale face.

Calling him out was going to be asking for trouble Steve couldn’t afford. He didn’t even have a knife on him, much less a gun. He had his can of pepper spray, which he now clutched in his pocket, but if this guy decided it was to come to blows, there was precious little else Steve would be able to do about it.

He pulled his scarf up over his nose and kept his eyes on the road until his stop. If he was lucky, this guy would be the kind of mugger who would be satisfied with the petty cash Steve had crumpled in his wallet, but the feeling in Steve's gut told him he was after something much worse. He had the sneaking suspicion that he’d been followed even before he left his shift at the hospital.

He didn’t dare look over his shoulder as he stood to disembark. Out on the street, the rain had calmed to a miserable drizzle. He strained his ears for a second set of footsteps behind him, in case the other man left through the back doors, but he could hear nothing over the rain and sounds of the city. The prickle on the back of his neck did not abate.  The pepper spray was in his hand, his finger on the button. It was just two blocks to his apartment building. He walked as briskly as he could without breaking into a run.

Only once he reached his stoop did he risk a look back. The street was empty.

Steve let out a sigh of relief and shook his head to chide himself as he trotted up the stairs. He got as far as slotting his keys into the door when the voice spoke just beside his ear.

“Hey,” the man from the bus said softly.

He’d appeared as if from nowhere, so close he could plant his hand on the door, trapping Steve with his body against the building and the railing. Steve whirled on him, pepper spray at the ready, but stopped when he got a good look at his eyes. By then, of course, it was too late.

The eyes always gave their type away when they were on the hunt.

“You look scared,” the vampire purred. “Don’t be. Why don’t you invite me in?”

Well-fed, a vampire could pass for human, but as their hunger grew, the predator in them began to show. This one’s eyes were a bright yellow and fully narrowed to slits.

“I―” Steve started, and then promptly forgot what it was he wanted to say. He couldn’t look away from that gaze if he even had the will left to try. There was something familiar about the rest of his face, but that didn’t seem important now. Steve’s thoughts grew fuzzy at the edges, leaving him standing like a deer in headlights with his pepper spray still poised in the air.

The vampire leaned closer and gently, gently pushed Steve’s arm out of the way. The pepper spray lowered, then clattered to the floor.

“Please?” the vampire whispered, this time directly in Steve's ear.

A shiver ran up his spine. Despite the rain and chill, he felt warm.

“Yeah,” he heard himself say. “Come on in.”

The vampire smiled a sweet, beautiful smile and turned the key in the lock. It opened with the softest click. He then paused a moment to study Steve’s face, until his eyes finally settled on Steve’s mouth.

Steve’s heart speed up as if his body was still struggling against his mind to either fight or flee. A vampire’s arsenal for the hunt consisted of two primary weapons― first its eyes, then its venom. It was uncommon, though not unheard of, for humans to escape the former, but the old adage regarding the latter held true: _once you kiss a vampire, you’re as good as dead._

Oh, but what a sweet death it would be.

Though his eyes were mad and hungry, his lips were tender and slow when they met Steve’s. The vampire’s gentleness mixed with his glamour and toppled all Steve’s defenses without question. Before long, Steve was the one rising to his toes and curling his fingers into the vampire’s collar in a wordless plea to deepen the kiss.

The vampire didn’t let him. He pulled back much too soon and threw open the door.

“After you,” he said, and ushered Steve inside.

He kept a hand on Steve’s waist all the way up the stairs, and enveloped him again as soon as Steve made a move to unlock his apartment. Tilting Steve’s chin up, he captured his eyes again.

“Anyone else home?” he asked.

Steve gaped and failed to even parse the question. He was too busy wondering first and foremost why it was taking so long for the vampire to kiss him again, but some deeper part of his brain was also whirring fervently, trying to place the man’s face. Steve knew him from somewhere, he grew more certain of it by the minute. His name was practically on the tip of his tongue.

“Anyone live with you?” the vampire asked again, more intently now. Something in his inflection made Steve’s vision tunnel and his head spin. He felt hot, almost feverish. He wanted nothing more than to press himself against this man.

“I live alone,” he answered without giving it a second thought.

The vampire’s smile grew wider; his hypnotic eyes crinkled at the edges. Although the keys were still in Steve’s grasp, the vampire had only to wave his hand and turn the knob for the door to swing open into Steve’s studio apartment.

Inside was a modest arrangement. There was the bed against one wall, the kitchenette along the other. The only window was plastered with black paper and its curtains were drawn tight. Steve scarcely had time to turn on a light before the door shut behind them.

Now out of sight of any potential onlookers, the vampire wasted no time. All Steve had to do was blink and he found himself pinned to the wall, gasping as he found a welcome thigh pressed between his legs. His heart hammered and warmth bloomed across his face and chest.

“I’m gonna make you feel so good,” the vampire growled into his neck. He mouthed along Steve’s pulse, but his fangs only brushed the skin for the time being. He pressed them in gently, never quite breaking the skin.

Steve’s knees buckled nevertheless. He was lucky to have the wall and the vampire’s broad shoulders for support. The vampire must have sensed this, because as suddenly as he'd been cornered, Steve found himself hoisted into the air like he weighed nothing at all. He needed little coaxing to spread his thighs wide around the vampire’s hips. It was almost too easy for the vampire to help him out of his jacket and scarf, leaving his neck bare for the taking. The vampire’s cool tongue traced a wide swath from collarbone to jawline, and left the skin there tingling.

“Please,” Steve begged him, though for what, he could not put into words. His back arched to get closer.

The vampire growled softly and the next thing Steve knew, he was being dumped onto the bed, feet from where they had been standing earlier. He just had time to whine from the absence of touch when the vampire was on him again, this time, finally, sinking his fangs into the sensitive flesh of his neck.

Steve wasn't so out of it as to miss the sudden stabbing pain in his neck, but the effect of the vampire’s saliva was quick, and Steve’s yelp of surprise dissolved into a moan in the same breath. It wasn't just pleasure, it was the most intense pleasure he had ever felt in his life. Lights erupted from behind his eyes. His fingers dug into the vampire’s hair.

"Bucky!" he gasped.

The vampire jumped to his feet like he had been burned. His sudden absence left Steve stunned for a moment, before his head began to clear for the first time since their eyes met in the rain. He sat himself up gradually to keep his head from spinning any faster than it already was.

“What did you just call me?” the vampire hissed. His eyes were wide now, and he backed himself up until his back met the kitchen counter. The plastic, wood-toned paneling creaked under the force with which he gripped it.

Steve touched his fingers to the warm fluid running down his collarbone, and found they came back red. The pieces were starting to come together, albeit slowly. Still, there was no pain, not even when he felt the source of the blood flow.

“Don’t touch that,” the vampire growled, then louder, “Where did you hear that name?”

Steve’s head was clearing rapidly now. He recognized his apartment and that there was a stranger in it, and from there, the clarity swept in. Although the details were fuzzy, he could follow the general thread of events. The realization of what had occured was like a punch to the stomach. He’d been an inch from death, and it would have been a mistake to think himself any less so now for knowing it.

First things first. The nearest thing at hand was his own comforter. He balled it up and pressed it to the side of his neck to keep pressure on the bite.

“I said, don’t touch that!” the vampire barked.

Faster than anyone should have been able to move, he was back at the bedside again to wrench the blankets away.

“Hey!” Steve snapped, finding his voice again. “Fuck off!”

He struggled to hold the vampire’s face at bay with both hands, but the effort was futile. It was all too easy for him to lean back in and run his tongue over the wounds. If he had wanted to, he could have finished Steve off there and then, but remarkably, he didn’t. He was already pulling back even before Steve landed the kick in his gut.

“Idiot,” the vampire spat as he took a step back, clutching the side where the kick connected. “That flimsy blanket wasn’t going to keep you from bleeding out.”

Steve’s heart roared in his ears. He pressed the blanket back where it had been, if only out of spite.

“Oh yeah, _now_ you care about my wellbeing,” he growled back. If looks could kill, the glare he was leveling would have left the vampire undead another two or three times over. Unfortunately, he couldn’t manage more than that in present state.

The vampire shook his head. “I closed your wounds,” he said. His tone had softened. “See for yourself.”

Steve didn’t have any reason to trust him, but something about resignation in his voice convinced him to check anyway. Without taking his eyes off him, Steve released pressure enough to feel the side of his neck.

The skin was intact. He frowned. If he hadn’t felt it for himself moments ago, he would have thought the skin was never broken. All that was left were two raised bumps, like scratched mosquito bites, healed over.

“This is another trick,” he said.

The vampire shook his head a second time. “No trick. See, I mean your life no harm. Now, tell me,” his tone hardened. “Where did you learn that name?”

“What name?” Steve spat back at him. The memory of whatever had come out of his mouth while he was under the glamour was gone. The chill of his apartment was seeping back in.

The vampire studied him with a terrifying ferocity, but said nothing.

“Get out,” Steve said when the vampire seemed to have nothing more to add.

“Not yet,” the vampire replied. Something in his posture shifted. He lowered himself into the sole dining room chair. “I have questions.”

“I don’t care,” Steve growled. “Get out now or I’ll call the cops.”

Without any kind of flicker in his expression, the vampire took a phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Steve belatedly realized that it was his, though he didn’t have the faintest clue when the vampire had fished it out of his pocket.

“First question,” the vampire went on. “Who are you?”

Despite Steve glaring at him for some time now, he felt no glamour or magic. Perhaps it was the distance. The vampire met his eye steadily, but there was a wariness in the set of his brows.

“If you don’t get out, I’ll make you,” Steve snarled, though it was evident to them both that he was no match for vampiric speed or strength. This predator had already gotten the better of him once. He could do it again, as easily as snapping a toothpick.

The vampire merely sighed and looked away.

“I think we know each other,” he said after a time, ignoring the empty threats.

Steve’s eyes narrowed further. He looked the man up and down.

“I don’t think we do,” he decided. In his right mind, he was absolutely certain he’d never seen this man before today.

The vampire frowned. This was evidently not the answer he had hoped for. “Maybe not,” he said. His eyes were still fixed on the floor, or somewhere past it. “But we knew each other once. I’ve heard of things like this, but... never expected it would be you. Not so soon. Not here.” When he looked up his expression had shifted imperceptibly again. If Steve wasn’t mistaken, there was a sadness there now.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told him  “We’ve never met.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” the vampire sighed, and got to his feet. “I know you very well, Steve Rogers.”

Steve sat stunned a moment before he remembered the hospital ID badge pinned to his chest. His hand darted up to flip it over so his name and photo faced inward. He glared, but the vampire’s back was already turned as he busied himself opening all of Steve’s cabinets one at a time.

“Where to begin...” the vampire continued as he found what he was looking for. He retrieved a glass and set it on the counter. “You were born with a heart murmur and you had to wear a brace as a kid to straighten out your spine. You have asthma and peanut allergies. There’s a star-shaped birthmark on your right thigh that only appears if you let it see the sun regularly, which you almost never do because your Irish skin burns faster than butter left too long on the skillet.” He paused to study the contents of Steve’s fridge before he made up his mind to fill the glass with orange juice. This he brought to the bedside as a peace offering.

Steve’s expression was hard. He did not so much as look at the drink extended to him.

“You stalking me?” he demanded. The fact that the vampire knew so much made him feel more violated than anything else that might have occurred that night.

The vampire shook his head as he set the glass down, then retreated to pick Steve’s discarded jacket off the floor and hang it on the hook in the hall.

“No,” he admitted, his voice suddenly hollow. “Before I saw you leaving the hospital tonight, the last time we met with was 1943. Then I went overseas and never came back. You remembered me for a second there, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Glamour only works once, and even if I could go back, you’re not really yourself under my spell.”

Once the coat was hung he brushed himself off and smiled without teeth.

“Drink up,” he added. “At a guess, you lost at least a half a pint. You need the sugar.”

Steve continued to ignore the glass. His head was still spinning, though no longer from blood loss. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying have a nice life, Steve,” the vampire replied with a half-shrug. “Live long, consider your own happiness for once, pick your fights sensibly, and if you get sick, see a goddamn doctor.”

With that, he shoved his hands in his pockets and turned for the door. Steve almost considered letting him leave, but he had yet to get a satisfying answer to anything all night. The smart thing to do would have been to keep his mouth shut, but Steve had never been very good at that. A vampire was letting him live, and more than that, was making a show of caring for his well-being. There was nothing if not strange about that.

Before the vampire even disappeared from view,  Steve’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Wait!” he called.

The vampire paid him no heed. At the sound of his door opening and closing, Steve leaped off the bed and bound after him. Even so, the vampire was already at the bottom of the steps by the time Steve made it into the apartment hallway. The speed at which these creatures could move would never not be unsettling.

“Where are you going?” Steve called after him.

The vampire halted and looked back up at him. His eyebrows were knit together in something like annoyance. “Where do you think? I haven’t eaten.”

Steve’s heart picked up speed again. For all his confusion about being spared, it hadn’t occurred himself that someone was destined to take his place tonight. In exchange for his life, someone else had to die. Someone with friends. Someone with a family.

Steve gripped the banister and swallowed. “Don’t go.” He refused to look at the vampire, so he couldn’t be sure how the request was taken. After a pause, he continued, “I can’t let you go kill someone else. Stay. Finish me off. No one's gonna miss me.”

A silence followed. When Steve looked up, the vampire was back at the top of the stairs without having made a sound. He was no longer annoyed, but livid.

“I don’t do that,” he growled, just loud enough to be heard. “Not if I can help it. Nobody dies tonight, especially not you.”

Steve looked away again.

“Thought it wouldn’t hurt to offer,” he muttered, now both ashamed to have said anything and offended that he’d been rebuffed. He swallowed it all back in favor one of one last question.

“At least answer me one thing.”

The vampire crossed his arms. He didn't speak, but he waited, which Steve recognized sooner or later as permission.

“You know me,” he said, daring once more to meet his yellow, cat-like eyes, “but I didn’t catch your name.”

The vampire’s expression dropped as if Steve had slapped him, but that expression was gone as quickly as it came, replaced again by the mild annoyance he evidently wore as a mask.

“Bucky,” he replied, like he was disappointed to have to say it. “I’d shake your hand but I’d prefer we not meet again.”

Steve’s nose wrinkled. “Suits me,” he scoffed. “Contact with the supernatural never ends well for us _mere mortals_.”

The vampire snorted. It was hard to tell if that had even meant to be a laugh or not, but he was already turning to go without further goodbyes.

Steve stayed to see him reach the bottom of the steps, then returned home and latched the door behind him. He slid the chain shut for good measure, and after a second of reconsideration, returned with a chair to tuck under the door handle just in case. None of it would actually protect him from a vampire who _wanted_ to get through, but he went through the motions as if through a dream nonetheless. His legs gave out by the time he made it back to the bed.

He looked down at his hands and realized they were shaking. There was a good deal of blood soaked into his sheets, and likely into the mattress beneath them. When he trusted himself to stand again, he got up to right a lamp that had been knocked over in the initial shuffle to the bed. It wasn’t the missing chunks of his memory that worried him now, or even his brush with death.

He’d been _ready_ to die, he realized― asked for it, even.

His breathing came shakey but didn’t catch in his chest as it did when anxiety squeezed his airways. In that regard at least, vampire venom had its perks―although for now, the presence of affect-effects only served to unsettle Steve further. If nothing else, they only made what had just happened all the more real.

As he undressed and readied himself for bed, the aftereffects of a vampire bite began to make themselves even more apparent. Unlike some monsters, their venom didn’t carry the seed of their infection. Rather, the adaptation was to drive a survivor of an attack to come crawling back for more.

When Steve removed his contacts, he found his eyes had been straining. He could see clear across his apartment now without putting on his glasses. Not a single one of his joints hurt. His breathing still came without a hitch. He could rely on it to remain this way for a good twenty-four hours, if his experience with vampire bite victims in the ER served.

Despite his brush with death, once he was able to distract himself enough to fall asleep, he slept deep and well. It was nearing noon by the time he awoke, although he could otherwise not remember the last time he had slept more than four or five hours uninterrupted. This time, there had been no cough to wake him that required an inhaler to calm. As a matter of fact, he felt the picture of health through the rest of the afternoon and evening. It wasn’t until sometime past midnight, in the middle of his shift, that his wheezing returned and he felt the usual tiredness settle into his bones. A part of him was relieved to welcome it all back. The ordeal was at least behind him.

He didn’t tell a soul about his encounter. As time passed, he was able to convince even himself that he’d dreamt the whole thing up. He didn’t know if he should laugh at himself to sink so low or question what it said about him that he should imagine the type of man for himself who could hold him down and take what he wanted. The thought alone stirred feelings that were best left ignored. If it had been a figment of his imagination, then in his imagination it could remain. If not, well, Steve couldn’t deny that had they met under different circumstances, Bucky could have been very much his type, no glamor necessary.

A month passed, then two. Soon it was the snow that Steve had to battle to get home. It was on one such night when a fresh layer was coming down across the city that Steve returned to find his stoop a mess of prints. There was a boot print mixed in here and there, but the vast majority, strangely, were pawprints. They were canine if Steve had to guess, but too numerous to belong to just one stray dog. Still, this was New York City. Far be it for Steve to guess what strange things occured on its streets at night.

Things grew more personal once Steve let himself inside. There was nothing exceptionally out of the ordinary in the lobby, nor in the stairwell. The carpet was dark and wet, but that was to be expected with the snow outside. When it came time for Steve to let himself into his apartment, however, he found the bolt was latched. He never locked the bolt when he left, only the lock itself.

Still, it had been a long shift and a fitful, short sleep before it. Perhaps he’d slid his key into the wrong lock when he left. In any case, it was a simple matter to unlock it, too, and see himself inside.  When he tried to switch on the overhead light, he remembered the bulb had burnt out that morning and that he’d meant to stop at the corner store for a new one— another thing that had slipped his mind. It would have to be a task for the morning.  He let muscle memory lead him to his nightstand to turn on the light there.

In the center of the room, where there should have been empty space, he instead felt his foot catch on something large and heavy. His exhaustion got the better of him, and, rather than just tripping, he fell to the floor with a painful thud. Cursing under his breath, he crawled the rest of the way to the lamp and switched it on.

The thing he had tripped over was a body.

It lay face down and shrouded mostly in a large overcoat. There was blood on the floor beneath it and a smeared, bloody handprint on the hallway wall, like someone had tried to keep themselves upright and failed.

Steve’s nurse instincts took over before the rest of him had time to take the scene in. He checked for pulses at the neck and the wrist and found both absent. It took a good deal of effort to roll the body over onto its back to look for breaths, but he stopped when he recognized the intruder. In his case, a lack of vital signs was par for the course.

“Bucky?” Steve asked.

Bucky did not respond. His head was lulled to the side and his eyes stayed closed, with fangs still unsheathed. Steve pursed his lips and pulled aside the fronts of Bucky’s coat to find the source of the bleeding. At first, he thought Bucky may have been lying on his stomach too long and that the blood had congealed all over his front, but the truth was far more horrific.

He’d been gutted.

There were huge gashes torn over his chest and abdomen where strips of flesh had been shredded, in places as deep as muscle and beyond. A human would have been dead in minutes, if that. Steve had seen a vampire or two survive worse than this in the ED, but only just barely and with the aid of a few blood transfusions. He’d also seen a fair few reduced to dust by less. The surest way to kill a vampire was not sunlight but exsanguination, and whoever had done this to Bucky knew that.

Steve pulled the jacket as far off him as he could, and then used his pocket knife to get the fabric of his shirt off the wounds by cutting what was left of it away. There was no good protocol for how to deal with wounds so severe on the undead, so Steve pressed forward with what he knew. After a cursory sweep to make sure there was no debris in the gashes, he gathered every towel he had in his bathroom and placed them, still folded, over the worst of the injuries. They were the only things he had large enough to adequately keep pressure on such a large area, and even then it took Steve half lying on top of Bucky to hold them in place. When he finally got his weight settled, he could have sworn he heard the vampire groan.

“Bucky?” Steve asked again. “Hey, Bucky. You there?”

Another groan, and this one couldn’t have been imagined.

“Stay with me,” Steve warned him. “But don’t move around too much.”

Bucky grimaced and cracked open an eye. It was lemon-peel yellow― no great surprise given that all the blood he’d consumed in the past month at least was currently soaking into Steve’s carpet.

“Steve?” Bucky croaked. “Are they gone? Did they hurt you?”

“Who?”

Bucky let his eyes fall shut again and grit his teeth. “Werewolves.”

Of course, he should have guessed.

“All that’s left of ‘em is prints,” Steve assured him.

“Then they’re still out there,” Bucky panted through what was clearly excruciating pain. “If they left, they would’ve stopped to cover their tracks.”

Saving a vampire’s life wasn’t exactly in a human’s best interest, especially when that vampire had made a pass at him once before. Still, Steve’s self-preservation instinct had never been especially keen. He couldn’t bear to see anyone suffer like this, dead or alive.

“What can I do to help you?” he asked.

Bucky peered up at him again. Steve could understand his apprehension, if that’s what his expression was meant to show.

“Well,” Bucky said. He tried to smile, Steve thought, but it could just as easily have been another grimace. “You could start by getting off me.”

Steve shook his head. “I gotta keep pressure on your wounds.”

“Drawing out the inevitable is what you’re doing,” Bucky groaned. “Get off. You weight more than you look.”

Reluctantly, Steve did. He sat back on his knees and watched as Bucky pulled the towels off himself and took in the sight of his own mangled torso. Perhaps it was that vampires were used to the sight of gore, but his expression was surprisingly nonplussed.

“Why’d you come back?” Steve asked him as a means of distraction. Who he was trying to distract was anyone’s guess.

Bucky tried to chuckle, but it didn’t end well for him.

“You invited me inside once, remember?” he explained. When he focused on Steve, his eyes grew calm.  “The pack’s code of honor wouldn’t let them take the fight inside a human residence, and yours was the closest.” He paused to squeeze his eyes shut against some wave of pain. “I’m sorry you had to see me like this,” he continued once it seemed to have passed. “I could’ve let ‘em tear me apart outside, I know, but I was hoping… I wanted I could see you one last time before the end.”

There was that sad look again that Steve had seen the last time, now tinged bittersweet. He looked at Steve like he knew him to his core and bore an affection for all he saw regardless. It was evident even with his pupils constricted to two slivers.

Steve couldn’t bear to hold that gaze, but when Bucky’s hand found his, he couldn’t bring himself to deny him. For the longest time, he didn’t say anything in response.

“The guy you remember from 1943,” he asked after a time, “who was he to you?”

If Bucky’s hand wasn’t still solid in his, Steve would have thought he’d slipped away for how it took him to answer.

“A friend,” he said. “Just that.”

His tone was resigned, but it would have taken a deaf man not hear the regret either. Steve couldn’t put his finger on the twinge it elicited in his chest. It wasn’t quite envy. Steve had his fair share of acquaintances, but when it came down to it, he had any number of excuses at the ready not to grow close to any of them. Maybe it was finally catching up to him.

In this case, however, it might just pay off. He’d always promised to himself that he would never turn down a chance to help.

With a sigh, his mind was made up.

“Well,” he said, giving Bucky’s hand a light pat. “I can’t know what he would have wanted to say to you in this situation. I’m sure he would have known the right words, but I don’t. I’m not going to try and guess, either. I _do_ know what I’m going to do though.”

He looked up at Bucky with determination in his eye, but wasn’t prepared to see Bucky’s brows furrow at the sight.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Steve,” he warned him. “I’m telling you, _don’t_.”

Steve had already pulled the knife out of his pocket. Bucky made a failed attempt to grab it, but his speed seemed to have bled out of him along with everything else. Steve leveled the knife at his own wrist. Bucky wouldn’t survive the night without blood and they both knew it. As far as Steve was concerned, he’d been living on borrowed time as it was.

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Bucky barked at him before he could draw blood. “It’ll still feel… good. Like last time. Once my spit gets into your bloodstream you won’t be the one in control anymore, and neither will I. Don’t do this, Steve, you hear me? I’ll _kill_ you.”

Bucky’s eyes begged him where his voice failed. Steve paused with the knife still held in against his skin. He weighed the options only momentarily, but ultimately he knew there was only one choice. His mind was made up: Bucky wouldn’t waste away to dust on his watch.

“Nobody dies tonight,” Steve quoted back at him. “Especially not you.”

He pressed down and drew blood, and when a line of red bloomed from his wrist he pressed it to the vampire’s yearning mouth. Bucky groaned when he wrapped his lips around him—maybe in protest or maybe in hunger, it was hard to know now. His whole body tightened, and his heels dug into the floor to push himself closer. Steve could feel Bucky’s tongue trace the opening of his cut, and when sucking wouldn’t get the blood out fast enough, he grabbed Steve’s arm to hold him in place with such vice-like intensity it forced Steve down to hand and knees. By the time his teeth sank in, the numbing effect of the saliva had already mostly taken hold.

Without the glamour, there was no unwinding inhibition or heated yearning to precede the arousal. It coiled in slowly from the moment Bucky’s lips touched his wrist, and from there, it built up and rolled in like the tide. Ebb and flow matched with the rhythm of Bucky’s tongue, and Steve caught himself rocking along with it.

He let his eyes fall shut. His mind scrambled for some pleasant image to latch onto to clear away the picture of mangled flesh bathed in orange lamplight, but the next adjacent thing was the lovelorn look he’d seen in Bucky’s eyes. If Steve had to guess, in life his eyes would have been deep brown, like labrador fur. His skin would be sunkissed and his hair freshly washed. He wouldn’t look quite so sad, but Steve wouldn’t all mind if he still looked just as hungry.

They would be somewhere far away from this city where the nights didn’t stretch into one another. He didn’t much care where as long as it warm. No long-dead lovers, no bloody corpses, no monsters or undead. It would just be them, alone, in each other's arms, able to touch and caress without a worry for all the world. There would be wildflowers that didn’t make Steve sneeze and sunlight that didn’t burn their skin. Bucky would be putty in his hands, panting his name into his ear and leaving fingerprint-shaped bruises on his thighs.

Steve’s head was starting to spin, so he rested his forehead on the floor. The rough carpet fibers interrupted the fantasy. He was painfully hard from the chemicals and the friction of his hips moving in his pants. He’d lost sensation up to his elbow, leaving the remainder of his arm tingling. Some distant fragment of good judgment tried to warn him that none of this was good news.

“Bucky,” he breathed, just barely sorting his thoughts back together. “I think that’s my limit.”

Bucky either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. There was sweat beading on Steve’s face and darkness gathering at the edges of his vision.

“Bucky,” he said again, louder now. He tried to pull his arm back, but the vampire’s grip had only grown stronger with fresh blood.

“Bucky!” he tried one last time. He tried to lift his head again, just to see what was going on, and that would be his final mistake of the evening. Steve was dimly aware of the room tipping sideways, and then, he was aware of nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

When next he awoke, Steve was in his own bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. There was a dilute ray of sunlight coming in from under the curtains. Where it fell on the carpet, there was a large, dark stain. No body, no ashes.

The kettle screamed from the kitchen. Steve lifted his head, but the sound quickly cut off and he found his shoulders slammed back into the bed. Bucky hovered over him, an inch from his nose.

“You got a death wish?” the vampire demanded. “ _Never_ do that to me again.”

His eyes hadn’t been brown in life after all, Steve realized. Feeding had washed them of their color, such that they bordered on grey, with pupils round as bottle caps.

“Don’t go smiling at me, it’s not funny,” Bucky growled. He gave Steve a shove deeper into the mattress and sat up. “You’re lucky to be alive!”

“You’re doing better,” Steve croaked, his voice still thick with sleep.

Bucky sighed through his teeth and buried the heels of his hands in his eye sockets.

“Well, believe me, I wasn’t before you woke up,” he mumbled, but just as quickly managed to pull himself out of whatever train of thought was tormenting him and returned to furrowing his brows in Steve’s direction. “Think you can sit up to eat?”

“Definitely,” Steve said. At the mention of food, he was already pushing himself upright. A meal had never sounded more appealing.

“Woah, easy!” Bucky yelped at him as Steve began to sit up, but Steve ignored him. He had expected to feel dizzy, maybe have a headache, but he felt better now than he had in weeks.

“I’m fine, Bucky,” he assured. He sounded somewhat surprised, even to his own ears. “Great, actually.”

“For now,” Bucky muttered half to himself, and got to his feet. He quickly changed the subject. “I made breakfast.”

Steve’s head whipped to the table. “Oh, jeez, you didn’t have to do that!”

He jumped out of bed, only to discover that Bucky had also gone as far as stripping him of his bloodied clothes from last night and dressing him in the pajamas. He’d evidently had helped himself to a pair of sweatpants as well, which Steve couldn’t fault him for, considering the state of the clothes he’d shown up in. He especially couldn’t put blame on anyone for just how tight those pants were on his backside.  As for a shirt, he’d have to give Bucky the benefit of the doubt that he simply hadn’t found a shirt that fit, and so was forced to go without. Steve tried to catch a glimpse of his abdomen amongst all the other potential distractions, but Bucky’s back was already turned.

The smells of oatmeal and grease wafted from the kitchen. Judging by the mess in there, Bucky had exhausted every pot and pan Steve owned. On the table alone were a bowl of oats with a big helping of jam, three eggs, and six slices of toast. Something was still sizzling on a pan on the stove. Bucky returned to tend to it and measure out a mug of instant coffee.

“You went all out, huh?” Steve said as he claimed his seat. The plates hadn’t been set out yet, but rather than waiting, he just slid one of the eggs onto one of the pieces of toast with his fingers and ate it as an open-faced sandwich.

“Do you make all your victims breakfast the morning after?” he teased when Bucky came to bring him the coffee.

“Keep eating,” Bucky ordered in lieu of an answer, and turned back to tend the pan.

Steve took another bite. “It’s a shame you can’t eat real food,” he told Bucky before his next one. “There’s no way I can eat all this by myself.”

Bucky remained silent, prompting Steve to ask, “are you mad at me?”

Bucky didn’t turn around, but he did stop what he was doing to wave his spatula in the air. “What you did was stupid,” he told him pointedly. “And dangerous. And furthermore, unnecessary. I could’ve killed you. I almost _did_ kill you.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” Steve pointed out between mouthfuls. “So let’s put that behind us, okay? More importantly, how are _you_ feeling?”

“Fine,” Bucky huffed.

“That’s not a real answer.”

Bucky yanked the pan off the stove harder than necessary and cut the gas before he brought it over. He dumped the contents, home fries, over the plate of eggs.

“I’m fine,” he said again. “Another day or two and I’ll be equally as dead as before.”

His abdomen, now that Steve got his first good look at it, was a mess of raw scar tissue. It was whole enough at least to keep his intestines in, which considering how its started, was a minor miracle. Bucky cleared his throat when he caught Steve staring.

“The way I see it,” Steve told him, “I’m feeling just fine, and your guts aren’t falling out anymore. Any way you want to slice it, I think I made the right call.”

“ _Right,_ ” Bucky snorted. He turned back to the kitchen and feigned enraptured interest in scrubbing the pan clean so hard the cast iron handle threatened to bend. Steve helped himself to a second piece of toast.

“What did you do to those werewolves anyway?” he ventured to ask when he could tear his attention away from watching Bucky’s muscles work.

Bucky stopped scrubbing. His face screwed itself into an interesting expression between consternation and embarrassment.

“I guess you could say I… seduced one of their wives?” he admitted after some thought, then went back to scrubbing.

Steve choked on his coffee. Somehow, that was not the answer he had expected. Werewolves couldn’t mate with one another, so logic would dictate that the wife must have been human, but for some reason Steve nevertheless imagined Bucky lowering a girl with tufts of wolf hair sprouting from her cheeks into bed.

“I won’t be making that mistake again,” Bucky concluded.

Steve thumped himself on the chest. “So,” he forced out, “You’re… bi then?”

“We didn’t really have that term growing up,” Bucky replied. His back was still turned. “I’ve always considered myself... ‘not picky’.”

Steve nodded and sipped his coffee while he waiting for the urge to keep coughing to subside. Before he could ask more about when exactly Bucky grew up, however, his eyes fell the clock. He was on his feet instantly, slamming his coffee cup down on the table with a panic.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was asleep for fourteen hours!”

It wasn’t morning; it was the goddamn middle of the afternoon. He had an hour to get across town to his shift, and he hadn’t even had a chance to brush his teeth yet.

“Sit,” Bucky told him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

But it was no use. Steve was already halfway to the bathroom.

“I have to go to work!” he called from behind the door as he loaded up his toothbrush.

“They’ll take one look at you and send you right home where you belong,” Bucky called back.

Steve’s reflection looked back at him, paler than usual. His skin was almost ashen and his eyes were sunken deep in his skull. He could understand now why Bucky had raised all that fuss. He looked like he was on his deathbed.

“I feel fine!” he yelled through the door after giving his teeth the most cursory brushing and running his fingers through his hair. A shower was a luxury he couldn’t afford with the time he had.

He burst back out the door and scoured his floor for a clean set of scrubs. “Besides, I work in a hospital, in the emergency department of all places.” He got his head through the shirt he found and got to searching for his ID badge. “If anything bad happens, I’m in good hands. Although,” he realized once he’d found it and pinned it to his front. “As long as you’re here, it would be awful convenient if we could reset that day-long timer on these magical after-effects.”

“No,” Bucky cut in before Steve had even finished his sentence. “No, absolutely not. I’m not taking an ounce more from you. Not now, not ever. The Red Cross says no more than 1 pint every 8 weeks, and I took significantly more than that. This isn’t negotiable.”

“Be that way then,” Steve replied as he pulled on his pants and shoes. “But if they admit me over this, you owe me flowers.”

He didn’t mean it in the least, so it threw him when Bucky snorted and said, “yeah, what do you like?”

Steve stopped with one foot already out the door. “Dunno,” he thought aloud. “Something that doesn’t have pollen. Doesn’t matter. I have to go.”

The last he saw of Bucky, he was pointing the scrub brush after him as if to remind Steve he’d be keeping an eye on him.

 

***

 

Steve felt the drop coming. First, it was the splitting headache. Then, while he was making the rounds checking on patients, his legs threatened to give out from under him. He excused himself into the hall and made it about two steps before the wall caught him.

“Hey, you okay?” one of the orderlies asked.

Steve nodded.

_Yeah, just fine_ , he meant to say, but whatever came out of his mouth was unintelligible. Darkness closed in on his vision. First, it was a tunnel to the end of the hall, then nothing.

Sleep. End. Linoleum floor.

 

***

 

He’d only been joking with Bucky about being admitted, but they’d gone ahead and done it anyway, and to the ICU no less. At least if they had kept him in the ED, he would have been among his acquaintances. The ICU had all its own doctors and support staff. Steve had met some in passing, but most were complete strangers.

Once he was transfused with more bags of blood than he could count and found to be stable, he was transferred again to the floor. He was feeling significantly better at this point, but the residents were all aflutter about the medical mystery of how an otherwise relatively healthy twenty-six-year-old suddenly bottomed out with a hemoglobin of two.

“Two, twelve, what’s the big difference?” Steve asked one sarcastically.

“Normal for you would be 13.8,” the resident pointed out.

Steve did his best impression of a smile. “Well, we can’t all be perfect specimens.”

They were all fine people, even if they did spend the better part of the day trying to convince Steve to let them stick a finger up his butt to check for blood. He turned each and every one of them down on that count. As much as they were all just doing their jobs to make sure he wasn’t hemorrhaging internally, there was no medical mystery there to solve. He didn’t have the heart to tell them why.

In the day or so Steve spent on the ward getting his blood counts monitored, he received a few visitors. All were friends of his from the ED and none stayed more than the few minutes it took to wish him well or lovingly scold him for even bothering to clock in when he surely must have felt like a dead man walking. All the while, Steve wrestled with himself over whether to hold out hope for Bucky coming, too. He knew it was a silly wish. After all, he couldn’t even say they knew each other well, much less that they were friends.

As the hours before the final decision for discharge could be made trickled by and Steve readied himself to kick himself for dreaming, a final visitor arrived. Steve’s heart soared when he saw Bucky step between the parted curtains. He was fully dressed now in his own clothes. The large dark overcoat must have been too shredded to be worn again, but it was no great loss. Without it, all of Bucky’s muscles stood out through his shirt to the point of impropriety. The eerie color of his eyes was well hidden behind a pair of dark glasses.

He didn’t look nearly as pleased to see Steve as Steve was to see him. Bucky’s mouth twisted just so, and even with the sunglasses, it was easy to tell his eyes didn’t linger long.

“You should see the other guy,” Steve quipped in an attempt to diffuse the tension that was practically oozing his visitor. For a second, it almost seemed to work, or maybe he imagined Bucky’s lips twitch before, just like that, he was solemn again.

“This was the only thing that didn’t have pollen,” Bucky said, holding up a small potted cactus. It was squat, round, and covered in tiny sharp spines. “Reminded me of you.”

 

Steve sat forward and pulled his legs crossed underneath himself.

“Oh no, Bucky, I was just joking about the flowers,” he said. His stomach curled with guilt. “You didn’t have to.”

Bucky made his way to the bedside table as if he didn’t notice. He was still pointedly avoiding looking at Steve, or any of the machines attached to him.

“I wanted to,” he replied as he set the plant down, “to thank you, for everything. And to say goodbye.”

The last word caught Steve like a stray baseball upside the head.

“Goodbye?” he choked. He had to be sure he’d heard it. He didn’t know why it surprised him as much as it did. Any reasonable person should have been pleased by this turn of events, but to Steve it was something being ripped away too soon.

“Yes, Steve, goodbye,” Bucky replied. His voice was so low it was practically a whisper. “I almost killed you once. I’m not going to take that chance again.”

“But—” Steve interjected, then just as promptly cut himself off. He didn’t have a good counter-argument. “At least visit,” he tried.

He sounded pathetic, he knew. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of passing out twice in a day and spending the subsequent one in a hospital bed, but he couldn’t bring himself to care how it made him sound. He knew, even more so now, that if he were thrown back into the moment, he’d make the same choice he’d made the night before. That may have been the opposite of what Bucky wanted to hear, but his touch— his ferocity of caring— sated a thirst in Steve he didn’t know he had. He couldn’t just let him walk away.

“Maybe,” Bucky replied at the floor, “no promises.”

He swept the curtain aside and was gone without looking back. The feeling in Steve’s gut told him he wouldn’t return.

Still, he waited. When he was discharged home with orders to stay out of work for a week, he found his apartment spotless. He didn’t know what magic Bucky worked on the blood stains, but they had vanished as if they had never been. Even the refrigerator was stocked.

Steve placed his tiny cactus on the windowsill, where it had at least a faint hope of getting light. He watered it dutifully, and he waited.

It was a lot of time to spend home alone. For the first time in years, Steve dug up his old tin of pencils and bought a new sketchbook. He hadn’t had the urge to draw in nearly a decade, but thoughts of Bucky reawakened something in him. The first blank page stared him down. He ran his fingertips over the imperfections of its surface, and then he began to sketch.

His hand was rusty at first, but it remembered. He would need practice, and lucky for him, all he had was time. At first, he used it only to draw and to think— to think about why it was that he couldn’t stop ruminating about some man who he almost let kill him, whose life he saved without any reason he could imagine, who said he wanted to see him and who looked at him with such affection Steve could neither put into words nor reproduce faithfully on paper.

It’s not like that affection was even meant for _him_.

He hated himself for it, but he waited. Even after he returned to work he waited. Every night, a part of him wished that he would open the door and find Bucky sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for him, too.

He never did.

Bit by bit, the snow gave way to slush, and slush gave way to rain. The pages of Steve’s notebook filled up one after another, and soon one notebook grew into a stack. He was best at drawing what he could see, so Bucky was soon joined by tables and cups and trees and strangers, until his face and his longing eyes were slowly crowded out.

Eventually, Steve worked up the resolve to tell himself he was done waiting. He made an effort to spend more time out of the house when he wasn’t working. He did his best to move in the world rather than just through it. Quiet afternoons out of the house— in cafes and bookstores, and, as the days grew warmer, outdoors— made for good distractions, although thoughts of what he would say to Bucky, should he ever see him again, still preyed on his mind.

What he didn’t understand, he read. He read stories by, for, and about the undead. He read about others who had memories they couldn’t place as their own. He read, and slowly, the pieces came together and made his stomach ache.

He still watered the cactus every week. In April, it grew him a single, papery, pink flower. That was the same week their paths crossed for a third time.

Steve had stopped by a cafe near the bus stop to pick up coffee before a shift, and as he waited for his order, there he was, sunglasses on, sprawled in an armchair in the far corner. His legs were over one arm of the chair, his back against the other. He was lost in a paperback novel propped against his knees.

Steve couldn’t help himself. Coffee in hand, he wandered over. He hadn’t the faintest idea of where to begin, so instead, he just stood there until Bucky looked up.

There was surprise in his expression for a moment, and then Bucky swung his feet back to the floor.

“Hey,” said Steve. He nodded to the chair across from him. “Waiting for someone?”

Bucky shook his head, and then, to Steve’s surprise, offered for him to sit with a wave of his hand. Steve lowered himself to the very edge of the seat and pressed his palms to his coffee cup, both for warmth and to ground himself against the dream-like shift of the floor beneath his feet.

“What have you been up to?” he ventured to ask Bucky. He wished desperately he’d had something prepared to say for this moment, but for all the times it played in his head, he was left with a blank slate.

Bucky hadn’t taken his eyes off him yet. His expression was one of well-practiced neutrality. “The usual,” he replied. He closed his book without marking his place. “You?”

“The usual,” Steve answered, too.

They each waited for the other to say something. The air felt thick, sluggish.

“I—” Steve started.

“Listen—” Bucky said at the same instant, but cut himself off. “No, you go. What were you saying?”

“I wanted… I’ve been meaning to apologize,” Steve continued, staring straight down at his coffee lid. “I realize now that what I did wasn’t exactly fair to you. I don’t regret it,” he looked up to add, “But I can see how I placed you in a precarious position. I’ve been doing some…” he went back to fingering the lid— “ _reading_ on the undead. I can’t pretend to understand what you go through, but I know that it must be frightening to lose control. And I’m sorry I did that to you.”

When he looked up after speaking, Bucky’s expression had softened.

“Apology accepted,” he said with a small nod. “Thank you.”

“And that said,” Steve went on, switching to picking at the paper sleeve around his cup, “I just wanted to say that you seem... alright. And since we all have nights when we’re too lazy to cook and just want to defrost something or order in, I wanted you to know that, should you have one of those nights, you know where to find me.” He could feel the flush burning all the way down his neck and to his chest. “If you want to, that is. Won’t do anything you’re not comfortable with, cross my heart. If you say stop, I’ll back off this time.”

The offer had come out of nowhere, unplanned, but he knew as soon as he said it that he’d meant every word. He looked up ready to prove that much to Bucky if he had to, but instead found him looking back with something of a torn expression.

“Steve,” he said. “You don’t have to.”

“Well, the thing is, I want to,” Steve told him. “I liked talking to you. I think, under different circumstances, we could’ve been friends. Besides, I feel like I owe you one. So, take it or leave it.”

Steve was ready for another scolding for putting his life needlessly in danger, but what he got instead from Bucky was a silent laugh as he turned away to hide a smile and shake his head. Steve bit his tongue and waited for Bucky to explain.

“Okay,” Bucky said once he’d gotten a hold of himself. “Okay, different circumstances, I’ll take that. But I have two conditions.”

Steve straightened up and tried at least to act the part of someone not on the brink of jumping out of his skin. “Name them.”

“First things first, don’t compare yourself to a TV dinner,” Bucky said with a stifled chuckle. “From what I’ve seen and smelled of the stuff, you’re better than that.”

Steve huffed, neither agreeing or disagreeing with either premise. He did relax a little though, now a little more sure he wasn’t being laughed at.

“And two,” Bucky went on, “you have to let me take you out first.”

That threw Steve right off kilter again. He looked away and scrubbed at the itch that had developed on his nose as it grew far too warm in the room.

“What?” Bucky asked. Any attempt to feigning innocent he might have been going for in tone was utterly dashed by the smirk on his face. “You said yourself these weren’t the circumstances for friendship. Are you the only one allowed to go out on the limb today? As you say, take it or leave it, pal. I won’t hold it against you.”

Steve cleared his throat and forced his eyes up again. His mind was still reeling. He’d never thought he’d live to see the day when someone would ask him without the pretense of a practical joke. Much less a guy that looked Bucky. Much less a guy _as nice_ as Bucky.

“Where?” he heard himself ask.

A huge grin spread across Bucky’s face. “The best place there is. Coney Island.”


	3. Chapter 3

On a weeknight when Steve didn’t have work, they met just after dark at the Ocean Parkway station. For a man who could face trauma codes without flinching, Steve knew he was far too nervous for his own good. After triple-guessing what to wear, he spent the entire subway ride down wringing his hands as he tried to determine whether this was even meant to be a proper date or just some vampiric courting ritual. 

Any such question was dashed from his mind as soon as he spotted Bucky on the other side of the terminal. The shirt he wore beneath his jacket was so sheer, it left nothing to the imagination. Steve’s mouth was dry as he approached. 

“Hey,” he called past the other passengers as he worked his way over. 

Bucky turned to the sound of his voice at once. When his eyes fall on him, a warm smile stretched across his face. 

“Hey,” Bucky echoed. His eyes swept Steve up and down appreciatively, but lingered on the exposed skin above his collar. “You ready to be shown a good time?” Even without glamor, he was clearly well skilled on laying the charm on thick, so much so that Steve couldn’t quite tell if he was joking. 

When it doubt, he took it as a challenge.

“Born ready,” he replied. 

 

***

 

The park opened for the season only weeks before and there was still a spring chill in the air, so the summer crowds had yet to stifle the beaches and boardwalk. Families with small children were departing with the setting sun. Clusters of teenagers and tourists remained in park proper, but there was room to breathe. The rides would be running until midnight. Distant sheiks rose and fell in the sky.

Within the hour, Steve let his competitive streak get the better of him. 

“Did you get the pride out of your system?” Bucky asked as he held out a paper napkin.

Steve straightened up over the trashcan and wiped his mouth. “Not my best moment,” he admitted. “But you were the one that said I couldn’t ride the Cyclone.”

“I said you  _ shouldn’t _ ride the Cyclone,” Bucky reminded him. “And I was right.”

Steve spit into the trashcan one last time and glared at him, which only caused Bucky to laugh.

“Come on,” he said, clapping his arm around Steve’s shoulder. It sent Steve’s head spinning for an entirely new reason. “Lemonade will settle your stomach. We’re done with the rides for tonight I think, if you can handle not taking that as another challenge.”

“Yeah, I think I can manage that,” Steve mumbled.

Bucky led them to the boardwalk where the air was crisp and cool. The row of food stalls had all lit their signs, and the park beyond them was an incandescent dynamo of swirling color and light. Visitors moved against the backdrop as shadows. Peals of laughter broke through the top 40s songs gurgling from the loudspeakers, and further down the walkway, two men with a guitar and an accordion flanked a third who was crooning a Spanish love song through a megaphone. The breeze carried the smells of funnel cakes and the sea. 

They stopped for the lemonade, and a short while later for a corn dog, and pretended to squabble over who would pay. Bucky kept his arm around Steve’s shoulder and hummed a song Steve didn’t recognize. He could feel it as a rumble in Bucky’s chest more than he could hear it over the conversations around them, but somehow it did more to settle his nerves than words could have. 

“I can’t remember the last time I came here,” Steve remarked as he looked out over the dark rocks stretching from the beach into the water beyond. “It must have been before… well, before my mom got sick. She always took me here before the school year started. I haven’t been since I was—I don’t even know— maybe thirteen?”

“I came here as a kid, too,” Bucky smiled. With the sun fully set, he’d relegated his sunglasses to his forehead. No one was looking too closely at them this late at night. 

“Oh, that reminds me. Never got a chance to ask,” Steve said. “When  _ did _ you grow up?”

Bucky poked Steve in the ribs. “It’s not polite to ask your date his age on the first date,” he teased. 

“Hey!” Steve squirmed out his grip. “It was an honest question. You know practically everything about me and I know next to nothing about you.”

“Maybe I like it that way,” Bucky replied, but he was grinning ear to ear.

Steve huffed and pulled out his phone. “We’ll see about that,” he said. A moment later, he announced, “okay, here, I got it. The parks here opened in the late 1800s, so if you came here as a kid, you’re a hundred and thirty at most. And you were old enough to at least remember the 40s, so—”

“Stop,” Bucky groaned and placed his hand over the phone screen. “I yield.” He sighed. “I turned the big ten-’o’ a few years back. Are you happy?”

“Happy belated century,” Steve replied, triumphant. “That’s still young for a vampire, isn’t it?”

“In the grand scheme of things, sure,” Bucky admitted, his mood somewhat deflated. “But too old for you, regardless.”

It was Steve’s turn to tease. “I’ll let you know when I want your opinion,” he informed Bucky with a playful shove. “You asked  _ me _ out, remember?”

The smile found its way back onto Bucky’s face. “That’s fair,” he said. 

“So, let me think,” Steve continued, changing the subject back again. “You must remember the Great Depression, right? And World War II? And Stonewall?”

“Oh, no, not Stonewall,” Bucky cut him off. “I got turned near the middle of the Second World War. Barely remember the next half-century. It’s a long story.”

Steve gestured ahead of them. “It’s a long boardwalk,” he offered. “That is,” he checked himself quickly enough to add, “if you want it to be.” 

Bucky only coughed up a laugh and shook his head. “That it is,” he sighed as he came to a stop. His smile sobered as he studied the rest of the path along the shore, then looked to the pier that stretched out into darkness. Unlike the main boardwalk, it was completely deserted and lit only at intervals by streetlights. 

“Let’s go this way,” Bucky said as he turned into the dark. Steve took a breath and followed. He couldn’t yet be sure if this meant Bucky intended to avoid the subject or discuss it in private. Either way, before long, they were well out of earshot of anyone else in the park. Steve stuck close and bided time. 

“So,” he prompted after they had walked a considerable distance in silence. “You’re just gonna drop the fact that you don’t remember and not tell me why?”

Bucky sighed again and shoved his hands his pockets. His eyes went down to his feet, then out to sea. Steve drew closer still and waited while Bucky chewed his lower lip until it was pink and swollen. 

“It’s not that interesting,” Bucky decided after all that waiting. 

Steve knocked him with his shoulder. “It’s interesting to me,” he insisted. “Come on, is it a vampire thing?”

“It’s a vampire _ army  _ thing,” Bucky replied after consulting the night sky. 

“There are vampire armies?” Steve asked. 

Bucky shrugged. “Sure. Show me a battlefield and I’ll show you any number of mortally wounded survivors. All it takes is vampire blood and dedication.”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine,” Steve promised, “but—” He threaded his arm through Bucky’s. “I won’t let you get out of telling me about yourself. What brought you to New York for example?”

Bucky blinked down at Steve with a shade of surprise across his features before his eyebrows knit together into something sadder. His gaze was drawn to the lights on the horizon once more.

“I came looking for him,” he said. Steve knew just from his tone exactly who he was talking about, although he wished he didn’t.

“Your friend from 1943,” he finished for him. His shoulders deflated a little when Bucky nodded. He took back his arm. “You find him?”

“Something like that.” Bucky smiled in a way that made Steve’s chest hurt. He didn’t elaborate as to whether that meant dead or something worse, but he didn’t have to. It couldn’t have made the silence that followed any easier. 

The idea dawned on Steve that this date may not be entirely between just the two of them. He swallowed,  rubbed the shiver out of his arms and glanced back at the lights of the boardwalk behind them. 

“But then I ran into you,” Bucky continued with a sick laugh, just as Steve got ready to worry about that very thing. “I thought at first I was seeing things. I hadn’t eaten for a month at that point, so I wasn’t exactly thinking straight, but I still had to follow you to be sure. And by the time I had the chance to let you walk away, it was too late. I couldn’t do it. Not again.”

Steve nodded, mostly to himself, the word  _ again _ echoing in his head like a war drum. It was his turn not to meet Bucky’s eye. He was certain now what was happening, and the truth left him hollow. 

“You loved him,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question. “Still do.”

To his horror, Bucky shrugged beside him. “Makes no difference now.”

Steve felt his stomach fall into freefall, a thousand times more sickening than the roller coaster could have ever been. 

“Makes no difference?” he repeated with a wince. “Of course it does. It does to me.” 

This brought Bucky to a halt, and Steve along with him. 

“I believe you now,” Steve continued, “what you told me that first night. I’ve read about reincarnation and I have all the symptoms. Had them all my life— the dreams, the déjà vu, all of it.  _ He’s _ the reason you followed me home from the bus and he’s the reason you came back when you thought you were dying. You said as much yourself.”

Bucky didn’t say anything at first. He just studied Steve, careful and guarded, like he was afraid of the next thing out of his mouth. 

“Are you mad?” he asked finally. 

Steve’s brows furrowed. “No. Maybe? A little,” he admitted. “Listen.” He’d been thinking about this since he put the pieces together for himself. For a time, he thought of himself as the middleman in all this, trapped between Bucky and some dead man he would never meet. He thought, in Bucky’s eyes, he may as well be the frame of a famous painting or the chest that held the treasure, never living up to the sum of his parts. He’d even managed to convince himself Bucky had done the right thing walking away at the hospital. 

It took him much longer to realize none of that was  _ fair _ . 

“The fact of the matter is, I’m not him and I never will be. I didn’t come here to play pretend with you. I came here because I like you and I want to get to know you. But first, you gotta decide where I fit into all this.  _ Me _ , I mean, not him.”

Bucky’s expression morphed rapidly through several different expressions, all equally unreadable and gut-wrenching, before it settled at last into a remorse that made Steve’s stomach twist.

“Don’t you get it, Steve? That’s why I left,” he replied at last. “I knew it wasn’t fair to you and I didn’t trust myself to make it fair. You didn’t exactly hide your interest, and I knew that if I let myself, I would lead you on. I couldn’t do that, so I got the hell out of dodge.”

Steve’s brows remained furrowed as he scrutinized the wood grains beneath their feet. He wanted to believe Bucky’s words so badly, it forced him to question the rest of his judgement. 

He peered up, still afraid to let himself be convinced.

“And?” he demanded. “What changed?”

“Suppose I did,” Bucky admitted. He looked back at Steve with the uncertainty of someone waiting to be contradicted, but Steve only waited for him to explain. “I’ve had more time to make peace with my past. I’d already mourned him once. When I saw you for the first time, it opened up some old wounds for me— wounds I thought I was done healing. Putting those demons to rest the second time was easier somehow. I told myself I was ready to move on for real this time, that if we happened to run into each other again, and if you still wanted, I would give this a chance. And by this, I mean you.”

By the end, his tone had grown almost reverent. He  _ sounded _ like he meant it, although Steve still hesitated to take his word for it. The music from the boardwalk had long ago been washed away in the waves. It was just the two of them, out at sea under a spotlight. 

“So will you?” he asked again.  

Bucky smiled at him softly then— too softly, Steve thought— and held out his hand, palm up, for Steve to take. Steve looked up at him and waited, his expression knotted to hide the anxiety coursing underneath. He wanted to hear the answer for himself, or at least get some assurance of it.

“You had questions,” Bucky reminded him without lowering his hand. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

The way he said it, Steve knew it wasn’t an offer he made easily. No one lived to be a hundred without picking up a few tragedies along the way, but the resolve to talk openly was plain on Bucky’s face. Whatever decision his turmoil had come to, it left him at ease. 

Steve took the hand at last. Bucky’s smile mirrored the squeeze he gave him in return.

“I want to know everything,” Steve declared as they set off down the pier once more, hand in hand. If he was really being given an open invitation, he would test it.

Bucky exhaled a chuckle. “Everything?” he checked. “Where the hell do I even start?”

“Start at the beginning,” Steve suggested, even knowing it was easier said than done. 

If Bucky noticed the way Steve’s heart raced in the silence that followed, he didn’t show it. He smiled at Steve though, still all too soft.

“The beginning it is,” he granted him. “But you won’t like it. The thirties was boring. We didn’t have much and we didn’t do much. The future couldn’t come fast enough— albeit, I don’t think any of us were expecting 1941 to end the way it did. What a Christmas that was.” He chuckled, before his tone shifted to something more serious. His grip slackened as if he meant to take his hand back, but Steve didn’t let him. They walked on. 

“I got drafted near the start of ‘42,” Bucky continued. “They sent me to North Africa first, and I made Sergeant pretty quick. By the following summer, they moved us to the front lines in Italy. Even before I got there, there were rumors circulating that some of the boys who were killed in action were seen walking around in town or in the woods after dark. Some men who went out alone at night never came back, that sort of thing. The  _ story _ was that the undead were out there building an army for the fascists, but who knows if people really believed it. Sounded crazy at the time, but hell, we were in Italy. Vampires have held their court in Rome since it was the center of the world. Maybe there were still some around. Who could say? It made for something to talk about, anyway.”

Bucky went quiet there as the memory of something dark passed across his features. Not daring to interrupt, Steve instead closed the space between them, until they brushed at the hip with every step. Evidently, even that was distraction enough.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, turning away again. “I’ve never talked about this part with anyone.” 

Any other day, Steve would have let him drop it, but not tonight. Selfishly, he wanted to have a piece of Bucky just to himself. Something he could say belonged only to him.

“Take your time,” was all he said. 

In response, Bucky smoothed his cool thumb over the back of Steve’s hand. 

“One day, I took a bullet to the leg and two to the gut,” he confessed after another bout of silence. “I went down immediately. My squad must have taken me for dead right then, because when I woke up, I was still out on that field. It was drizzling, and as the rain cleared, a fog rolled in. Real thick fog, milky. Judging by the mud, it must have been raining for hours before I woke up.  I was freezing, in pain like you wouldn’t believe, couldn’t see a damn thing. And then, just when I was sure I couldn’t drag myself an inch further, I thought I saw someone moving around a ways off. Couldn’t tell if it was one of ours or one of theirs, but either way, I figured they’d either help me or put me out of my misery. So I called out to ‘em. Didn’t dawn on me until after that nothing good prowls a fresh battlefield at night.”

“Did it hurt?” Steve asked. 

“Not sure,” Bucky admitted. “This is where everything gets distorted. There was a factory I think, some kind of metal table, at least at the very beginning. I don’t exactly remember being bitten, if I’m honest. But, God, I remember my first taste of blood. There’s something you never forget.” He let out a shaking breath. “They fed us something else most of the time, though. Something mixed into the blood maybe, I can’t be sure. But it made everything… blurry. Can’t be sure of anything. We moved around a lot though— Poland, Belarus, Ukraine.”

Steve smoothed his free hand over Bucky’s arm. Somewhere along the way, the walls he’d riled up around himself had begun to come down. As Bucky opened up, he slowly allowed himself the same. 

For the longest time, neither of them said anything. Steve would have been content to leave the story off there and get the rest another time, but to his surprise, Bucky had other plans. 

“I didn’t know how much time I’d lost until it was over,” he continued softly. “It’s funny. I’d like to say I broke out, or my will overpowered theirs, but it wasn’t any of that. I think it might actually have been an accident. I must have gotten lost or left behind for long enough for whatever they fed us to wear off. Mind you, it was a blizzard in a Russian winter at that point. And I had no possessions, no money, no identity— no idea even which way to point myself to get to civilization. The only thing I did have going for me was that the sun didn’t come up for four months.” He chuckled, dry and humorless. “And by the time I did find my way to people again, the world had changed,” he sighed. “The world had  _ changed _ , Steve.  Almost everyone I had known was dead. The ones that weren’t… I didn’t have any business in their lives anymore. I ran with some other vampires for a stint while I got my feet under me, but since then, I’ve been on my own mostly, just… passing time.”

The story was forced to end there. They’d reached the edge of the pier. 

“Thank you,” Steve whispered. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

For the first time since he started his tale, Bucky looked down at him. He seemed relieved by what he saw. 

“Hadn’t planned on it,” he admitted sheepishly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to drop all that on you on a first date.” He chuckled to himself again and rubbed the back of his neck as he looked back to the swirl and shift of amusement park lights. “Your turn on the way back?” he offered.

“Not yet,” Steve replied. Reluctantly, he pulled away from Bucky’s hand to lean against the wooden railing. 

He wasn’t so eager to leave this liminal moment just yet. The darkness here was almost alien. Everywhere he went in the city there were lights— street lights, ambulance lights, table lights, phone lights. Sure, there were pockets of darkness, but nowhere near as vast as the bay that stretched out before them now. Staten Island sat low in the water far to their right, on the very horizon in front of them they could see the distant glow of New Jersey. The rest was empty space, vast and lonely. 

Steve was distantly aware of Bucky stepping up to the railing beside him. He heard him ask, “you ever been out of the city?”

“A few times, sure,” Steve replied. He looked over and smiled at Bucky. “If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t get out much.”

Bucky ducked his head to smile, too, then turned his face up to the night sky. The usual three stars were out, fighting through the orange haze. 

“If you get the chance, go to up to New Hampshire,” Bucky told him softly. “You’ll like it there. When it gets dark like this, you can see what feels like the whole of creation up there.”

Steve wasn’t looking at the sky. 

Bucky’s throat curled in a graceful arch as he looked up, lit from below by lamplight dancing on the waves. His lips, chewed swollen by all those memories, were parted just slightly in concentration as he studied the heavens. The yellow lamplight that lit up his hair seemed to be forged of the same tarnished gold as Bucky’s eyes.

“I like it here just fine,” Steve replied, stepping in as close as their elbows would allow. 

Bucky looked at him. Surprise flashed across his features before he looked down and away.

“Oh, come on,” Steve sighed. “You were ready to fuck me the first night we met, and now you won’t even kiss me?”

Bucky was still staunchly not looking at him. His hands on the railing were somehow much more interesting. “This is different,” he muttered.

Defiance flared in Steve’s chest. He knew exactly what Bucky meant. That first night, he’d been someone else to him. Now he wasn’t. 

“Good,” he growled, and reached out to turn Bucky’s head and make him look.

Bucky didn’t even pull away. Rather, he only studied Steve with an expression that made him appear nothing if not violently young. He was waiting, Steve realized. Bucky had no breath to hold but the anticipation left a palpable charge in the air. 

His eyes darted to Steve’s mouth, and he swallowed. Steve didn’t need it any clearer. He rose up to this toes and caught Bucky’s lips, and in that split second, all the tension in the air unfurled. Bucky’s hands were on him suddenly, pulling him close and close and closer— on his hips, his back, sliding into the hair on the nape of his neck. The kiss sent lightning through Steve, but just as soon quickly as it started, Bucky was pushing him again. 

“Still a vampire,” he reminded Steve before he could catch his breath to complain. He had a point, too. Either Steve was back in high school again or there was vampire venom in that kiss. 

“I didn’t forget,” Steve panted. His grin was nearly too big for his face “That was part of the deal, right?”

Bucky studied him again at arm’s length. “You’re sure?”

Steve’s brow furrowed, but his smile only grew wider. “Try me.”

 

***

 

The dash back to Steve’s apartment felt far longer than it really was. Steve’s heart was his throat the whole way, and he could only assume it was the sound of his blood pounding in his ears that had Bucky’s leg bouncing as soon as they sat down on the subway. The train was just crowded enough that Steve didn’t risk anything more than putting in hand on Bucky’s knee. It was meant to soothe, at least until the hand began to slide higher up his thigh with every stop. 

When they disembarked, Bucky’s grip left behind finger-shaped grooves in the metal pole. His hand on the curve of Steve’s spine was much gentler the rest of the walk home, and when its weight vanished as they started up the steps, his skin tingled with the absence of Bucky’s touch. 

His mouth was on the shell of his ear as Steve unlocked the door. It was a miracle they made it inside without tripping over one another; what followed was a scramble to map the geography of how to best interlock their limbs, all the while shedding what clothes they could get their hands on. In short order, all that fumbling culminated in Steve shoving Bucky back onto the bed, and Bucky grabbing him by the belt loops to haul him down after. 

The venom’s effect was familiar enough by this point that he could discern it from his own feelings. It built in the back of his mind and as a heat in his belly, but he knew his own arousal apart from it, and there was no question in his mind that he wanted this— had wanted it since even before that first kiss, and even more so now that Bucky enveloped him and pressed against him with a groan from somewhere deep in his throat. 

This time, Steve wasn’t planning to let him get the better of him so easily. The rest was a scuffle, a blur, then pleasure blossoming like ink in water. 


	4. Chapter 4

The sliver of sunlight peeking through his patched up window brought Steve to the edge of consciousness again, before any of the half dozen alarms he’d set for himself could sound. He wrinkled his nose and rolled away, only to realize far too many seconds later that sunlight was not so harmless on a morning such as this, when there was a vampire in his bed.

Or rather, there should have been. He sat bolt upright to find that, in fact, he was alone. 

Disappointment sank in his stomach. He patted the empty half the mattress next to him, but even what little body heat a full belly had imparted on Bucky had long since evaporated. Steve tried to sort through his memories of the previous night, to pinpoint if he’d given Bucky some reason to leave, but his recollection was still too hazy. The only image that swam to mind was the sated smile Bucky had given him just before sleep took hold. He could remember the last fringes of his consciousness taking in those storm-cloud eyes, the glow fresh blood left on him, and thinking—  _ this, this is what he looked like alive _ _. _

Worry sat low in Steve’s belly as he got up to start his day. None of his usual stiffness accompanied him out of bed. In the mirror, he found his reflection was far from the death mask he was left with from their last encounter. There was some telling bruising around his collar, but the actual bite had fully healed. 

Other signs of Bucky’s presence were evident in the living room. Steve’s clothes had been folded and hung over the end of the bed; his phone had been taken out of his pocket and plugged in to charge; where there had once been a pair of browning bananas on the table, there was now an inverted tin that had an entire loaf of still-warm banana bread underneath it.

The most obvious thing, Steve found last. Back on his bedside table was a note scrawled in a cursive script which he’d failed to notice upon waking. It read, ‘ _ Get up slowly and eat. Call me if anything feels off _ .’ Underneath the words was a phone number.

Steve grinned with relief and picked up his phone.

> _ Steve: I had fun last night _   
>  _ Steve: Didn’t feel like staying for breakfast? _

He didn’t expect to get a response right away, and sure enough, none appeared. He left the phone on the table while he ate breakfast, and it sat heavy in his pocket while he ran errands in the afternoon. There was still no response by the time he was stowing it away in his locker at work. He even opened the text conversation again to be sure he hadn’t missed a notification, but it was only his two messages looking back. Briefly, he entertained the notion of sending a third, but thought better of it. 

Somewhere toward the middle of the shift, he was reminded of the radio silence again by the pleasant after effects slowly bottoming out. This time, there was no drop to speak of. If he thought hard about it, it was possible he was a little more tired than he would be otherwise, but it was nothing a cup of break room coffee couldn’t fix. 

During his stop in the break room, he checked his phone again, and his stomach did a flip when he saw that he had indeed received a text. The timestamp would suggest it had been shortly after sundown, which went a long way in explaining what had taken Bucky so long.

> _ Bucky: Didn’t want to impose. There wasn’t any immediate danger this time. How do you feel? _

Steve dropped down in the nearest chair. He read the message over a few times, muttering it under his breath with different inflections to be sure there was no anger in it. Only once he was satisfied did he get to drafting his reply.

> _ Steve: Still on both feet.  _

He thought about it, then sent another. 

> _ Steve: Do we get to do that again? _

This time, Bucky began typing back immediately. Steve couldn’t help it. He held his breath. His leg was jumping, and he let it right up until he heard the door open. Despite having nothing incriminating on his screen, Steve still shifted himself to ever so slightly and kept the phone close to his chest as Dr. Palmer  walked in the room accompanied by one of the on-call surgeons. The two of them were clearly too busy discussing their case to pay Steve any mind anyway. 

The typing stopped and started a few times before the message finally appeared, much shorter than he would have expected for the time it took. 

> _ Bucky: Really ought to wait 8 weeks. _

Steve collapsed back in his seat. There Bucky went with the ‘eight weeks’ again. 

> _ Steve: Just after me for my blood? _   
>  _ Steve: I had a good time last night BEFORE we got back to my place too. I like talking to you. Maybe we can just spend time together for the hell of it in the meantime? If you want _

Steve would readily admit that he’d lost track of their original agreement to be an easy meal somewhere along the line last night, and he was willing to bet his pride that he wasn’t alone. What was the worst that could happen? He took a deep breath and hit ‘send’. 

The replies came in rapid succession after that. 

> _ Bucky: Oh thank god _ __   
>  _ Bucky: Yes _ _   
>  _ _ Bucky: I didn’t want to assume, but yes _ _   
>  _ __ Bucky: Coffee?

Steve chuckled, loudly enough to earn him an amused look from Dr. Palmer and annoyed frown from her colleague, but after a muttered apology, he clapped a hand over his unbreakable smile and sank lower in his seat. 

> _ Steve: Really? I can't believe that was a question. Yes coffee. When? _

 

***

 

They set a date. 

Despite the late hour that their schedules necessitated, the little coffee shop—the very same one they had run into each other in the last time— was packed when Steve arrived. He had to stand on his toes to peer over the other occupants. The low light forced him to squint, but he quickly spotted Bucky in the same armchair he seemed to occupy permanently in this establishment. His hair was pulled back as before, and he’d evidently left the see-through shirt at home tonight in favor of a more practically-minded floral print, though this one, too, strained at the seams. He didn’t have a book with him this time. Rather, he sat with his his expression screwed in concentration while he stared down the coffee cup on the table.  

Steve failed to catch his eye to wave hello, but he wasn’t even in line long enough to even read through the menu before Bucky’s voice came from directly behind him, shit-eating grin plainly audible. 

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Steve hadn’t even felt him step in as close as he was. He whirled on him, but it was already too late to pretend like Bucky hadn’t gotten the jump on him again. Sure enough, the armchair in the corner was vacant but for Bucky’s jacket thrown over one arm. Steve shot back a competitive smile and turned his attention back to the pastry display. 

“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” he said while he looked. By his watch, he was actually still a minute early for their agreed time, but Bucky had clearly beat him to the place by a fair margin. “You better not be here to pay for anything. This one is on me.”

“What kind of date do you take me for?” Bucky snorted. “Of course I’m paying for you. Consider it payback.”

Steve looked back at him and wrinkled his nose. “For what?”

“Dinner the other night,” Bucky replied, still grinning.

The most Steve could do in front of the cashier was glare at him, but there was no real malice behind it. He let Bucky hand his cash over the register and they reclaimed their seats in the corner. 

“So, how was your week?” Steve asked as he got settled with his coffee in his lap. “Wolves give you any more trouble?”

“I’ve been careful,” Bucky replied. 

He picked up his cup as well, though he didn’t drink from it. His physiology wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. On the other hand, Steve wasn’t quite sure what to make of the twist to Bucky’s lips, nor did he miss the way Bucky sidestepped out of talking about himself completely yet again.

So he decided to press.

“Wolf packs have territories, don’t they?” he asked, innocent as he could. “How does that work between you and them exactly? Do they just let you operate as long as you keep a low profile? Or do you have your own turf?”

Bucky shook his head. “The werewolf packs more or less divided the city by boroughs,” he explained. “New Yorkers first and dogs second, I guess, but they can’t possibly patrol it all of it. As long as I don’t announce myself too loudly or get too close, I get to go on another night.”

His tone when he said this remained light, but Steve still eyed him up and down and waited for more reassurance than that. 

“That’s no way to live,” he said when none came.

Bucky’s smile widened. “About par for the afterlife though.”

Steve frowned.

“And it works out in my favor, really,” Bucky continued. “If the wolves keep our numbers in check, there’s less competition for blood. It means I can hunt more often and take less when I do, and  _ that _ means I don’t have to kill to survive. Everyone lives but the vampires too stupid not to get caught. Happily ever after.”

The crease between Steve’s brows only deepened. He wasn’t sure that quite fell under his own definition of a happy ending, but, then again, if he was going to try and find a silver lining, that was it. He tested the temperature of his coffee and burnt his tongue in the process.

“I take it you don’t consider the other vampires, uh, friends?” he asked in a not-so-subtle attempt to wrestle the subject back to Bucky. 

“I guess you could call them work colleagues,” Bucky admitted after some consideration. “Just not the kind you get together for drinks with after.” 

He grinned like a fool, and Steve only realized belatedly that he’d made a pun intentionally. It was endearing to be sure, and almost enough to distract Steve from the mission at hand, but not enough.

He shifted to get more comfortable in his seat. 

“Tell me about them.” 

It ultimately took a little more prodding than that, but sooner or later, Bucky obliged. Steve held his cup in his hands while he listened, and there it stayed until long after the beverage had gone cold. Much like the last time, it came down to getting Bucky started. Once he actually got to talking, there was no stopping him.

Their knees knocked together where they sat and neither one moved to remedy it. The night trickled by. The conversation turned to other things. All too soon, the shop was growing empty and its employees began to wipe down tables and close up for the night. If nothing else, that gave Steve the excuse to suggest they pick their conversation up later. 

And that was how, without Steve entirely sure whose idea it was, one date turned into a weekly affair. They would meet every Thursday without fail— same time, same place— and for those few blessed hours, Steve could shut the world out. His dripping sink, his student loans, the people he hadn’t been able to save that week— none of it seemed to matter nearly so much when he was watching Bucky’s whole face crinkle with laughter. 

There were lingering looks and fingers brushing for too long to be accidental, but at the end of the night, they always went their separate ways. Bucky had the same excuse each time. He’d step away to put Steve at arm’s length and he’d remind him,  _ It wasn’t worth the risk. Just six more weeks. _

_ Just five more, Steve.  _

_ Four more. What’s a month?  _

_ Three more.  _

_ Two.  _

_ One more week.  _

When the promised night finally came, Steve didn’t even bother to order coffee. Bucky raised an eyebrow about this, but he merely shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

“I’d be happy to chat, but maybe we could grab a quick bite to eat first?” he offered, hoping the lift in his voice was enough for Bucky to catch his drift. What with an extra button undone on Bucky’s shirt, just enough for a smattering or brown curls peeking out, he already knew he wasn’t the only one being forward, and he also knew himself too well to think he stood a chance of making it through the night with that full display.

As soon as he saw Bucky’s Cheshire cat grin, he knew that he was right.

“Yeah, I think I could eat,” Bucky admitted as he rose out of his chair. 

This time, things were different. Where that first night they had crashed together like a trainwreck, now it was the night that was their’s for the taking. With fingers and lips, they traced the paths that only their eyes had been allowed to wander in public. Two months of longing was worth its due. As condensation collected on the window, the only sounds in the room were the scrape of the bed on the wall and ragged breathing.

 

***

 

Steve woke in that hazy glow that he had come to look forward to, but that was not what brought a smile to his face before he’d even opened his eyes. The sound that woke him was the kettle boiling over. 

He sat up and beamed at the figure whirling into view to move the kettle off the flame. 

“Hey stranger,” Steve called to his back.

Bucky turned and gave him a guilty smile. “Sorry,” he said.

Steve kept grinning at him rolled out of bed. The aftereffects of the venom may have left him feeling healthy, but the rest of last night still had him aching in a few embarrassing places. He found he wasn’t all that ashamed. 

“Sorry for what? Should I be mad you’re making me breakfast?” he asked as he made his way to the kitchen and swiped a piece of toast fresh out of the toaster before Bucky could stop him. “Oh, it’s  _ such  _ an inconvenience.”

He took the opportunity to eye up the bacon and eggs sizzling in the pan, too. He didn’t even remember buying bacon, although there the package sat on the counter with a price sticker from a grocery store Steve’s wasn’t even familiar with.

Bucky rolled his eyes and shoved a cup of coffee into Steve’s hands. “You feed me, I feed you,” he explained, then pointed to the table. “Sit. This kitchen isn’t big enough for both of us.”

He was right. Even for one, space was a little tight between the dish rack and the oven on the counter. There was, however, just enough room for Steve to wedge himself onto the opposite counter and swing his legs while he watched Bucky cook. 

Bucky must have felt Steve’s eyes on him, because after a moment he stood himself up a little straighter and folded out the full breadth of his shoulders. Steve sipped his coffee and allowed himself to enjoy the view.

“But really,” Steve pressed him, swinging out a foot to splay his toes on Bucky’s backside. “What did you think I would mind?”

He had a hunch now, but he wanted Bucky to say it. Instead, Bucky just shrugged and nodded vaguely behind him. 

Steve waited. He sipped his drink and resumed swinging his legs beneath him. 

“I thought I might… stay,” Bucky admitted after an eternity. “I wanted to stay.”

Steve snorted before he jumped down from his perch and tapped Bucky on the shoulder. When Bucky turned, he motioned him lower as if to whisper something in his ear. 

Instead, he planted a kiss on his cheek. “Good,” he informed him. “You’re always welcome to stay. I’ll charge your rent in blowjobs and breakfast food.”

Bucky returned him a shy smile. It was only by virtue of his recent meal that any color rose to his cheeks at all. “Might take you up on that,” he whispered. 

He wasn’t kidding anyone. The next day, Steve went out and bought a second chair. It was nothing, really. He just wanted Bucky to have a place to sit, but after that, pieces of Bucky began to accumulate around his apartment by their own accord— a toothbrush in the bathroom, a hairbrush in the hall, a thermos in the cupboard. It was extra dishes in the sink and a second pairs of shoes by the door. It was a bed made when Steve hadn’t been the one to make it, or a warm meal ready when he got home. 

Bucky was around sparingly at first, but Steve at least saw him more than once a week now. Their evenings out turned into nights in, tucked around one another on the couch. Before long, they pooled their funds to buy a bigger bed. It positively dwarfed the apartment in Steve’s eyes, but Bucky had insisted that even if they didn’t upgrade from the twin Steve already owned, that he at least buy himself a new mattress.

“You deserve to sleep on something that’s isn’t at least as old as you are,” he pointed out. “I can smell the dust when you push my face in it.”

“I’ll consider it,” Steve told him as a sly grin spread across his face. “When I’m your age.” 

That earned him an arm thrown around the neck that was just a little too tight, but a week later, lying sprawled across the newly installed queen sized bed in his studio apartment, Steve realized he had never been happier to be talked into a purchase in his life. Hell, he didn’t think he’d bought anything half as nice for himself in as long as he could remember. 

Still, Bucky didn’t stay every night, even if he was around more and more often now that there was room for them both. Neither of them brought up where he went on the nights he wasn’t here, although the change in his eyes gave him away every time. Nevertheless, Steve made a point of never asking. Bucky had to live to eat. It was as simple as that. 

What he  _ did _ take issue with just how far Bucky took his rule on waiting between feedings. The hesitation to take too much too quickly, Steve could understand, but he soon discovered that just about any intimacy toed the arbitrary line between safe and unsafe, up to and including simple kisses of greeting. He just couldn’t wrap his brain around how he could spend a night watching a movie with Bucky’s head tucked under his chin, his nose an inch from his carotids, but not kiss the man goodnight. One night, when Bucky turned away from one goodbye kiss too many for Steve to tolerate, he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. 

“If you’re telling me I have go two months between kissing my boyfriend, you’ve got another thing coming,” he hissed into the hallway. There was no one around to hear, it being nearly 3AM, but Bucky herded him back into the apartment anyway and pulled the door shut behind him. 

He was expecting a scolding, but the words that rushed out were quiet and desperate, barely audible.

“What did you call me?” 

Steve’s heart gave a stutter and a start. He swallowed, and said it again. “My boyfriend.” He motioned behind him to the bed that crowded up his living room. “Seemed like a safe assumption to me.” 

Now he suddenly wasn’t so sure. He held his breath, and he waited. 

Bucky still looked decidedly taken aback, but more than that, he looked scared. Steve couldn’t think of a time he’d seen him scared before. The words to talk his way back were already at the back of his throat when, without warning or preamble, Bucky surged forward to capture Steve’s lips. The switch was so sudden, Steve actually let out an undignified yelp, but that was quickly swallowed up and he sagged into the grip Bucky had on his cheeks. By the time Bucky pulled away, Steve’s lips were tingling.

“Okay,” Bucky relented, his eyes taking in Steve’s face like he meant to remember it forever. “We’ll work on it. But maybe after I go get those chocolate chips?”

Their cookie dough wasn’t going to wait. Steve sent him out the door with a smack on the ass for his trouble, but even after he shut the door, he had to flex his fingers to stop them shaking. Once they did though, his smile turned more firm. 

That was one weight off his chest, anyway.

Bucky proved to be a man of his word. Over the coming weeks, he let Steve steal what kisses he pleased, though this only made Steve bolder. Soon he was climbing into bed just to shower Bucky awake with peppered smooches on his ear that grew deeper and more heated the further they traveled down. Bucky’s protests only carried so much resistance, and after Steve relented and left him be two mornings in a row as he asked, the complaints petered out entirely.

But as this resolved itself and Bucky found excuses to stay more and more often still, Steve began to notice his eyes grow eggshell, then amber, then mustard as his pupils slowly narrowed down. He grew jumpier in his hunger, and quicker to lash out. At first, Steve couldn’t put his finger on why he was waiting longer between hunts, and didn’t think it his place to ask, but as the situation grew more tenuous, he started to think.

And then, out of the blue, it hit him.

Bucky didn’t exactly seduce his victims by choice. The alternative— jumping them in an alley— was undeniably worse, so that was out of the question. But skulking around nightclubs and the backs of dingy bars? He’d been doing that all along. It might not have been acceptable behavior in a normal relationship, but Steve knew what he was getting into, and they were far enough outside of normal as it was. 

Still, he couldn’t just watch Bucky do this to himself—  not when all this started right around the time he’d been the one to slap a label on things. 

He thought carefully about when to bring it up. Bucky’s diet hadn’t been anything they talked about before, and they were both aware that it was with good reason. Asking over dinner seemed a little too on the nose, so after more consideration, he waited until a night when his shift ended with a few hours of moonlight left to spare, when Bucky crawled into bed beside him and scooped him up in his arms like he always did. 

Steve stared at the wall in the dark for a few minutes before he pulled together the right words. 

“You haven’t eaten in a while,” he said, casually as he could manage.

“It’s not time yet,” Bucky whispered beside his ear. “Three and a half more weeks, just about.”

Steve wriggled around until they were lying face to face, nose to nose. Bucky’s eyes were so yellow, they nearly glowed. 

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bucky said. Now it was his time to turn away, giving Steve no choice but to sit up if he wanted any view of him that wasn’t just miles of shoulder blades. 

“Bucky, you  _ know _ this is stupid.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bucky repeated, more forcefully. 

Steve’s brow furrowed. “For a guy who makes his opinion on vampires who leave behind corpses as clear as you do, you sure are angling to get there yourself,” he blurted, against his better judgment. 

That did it. Bucky sat up too, his face twisted in hurt and anger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell I don’t,” Steve hissed back at him. “You’re doing it because of me, aren’t you?”

Bucky’s scowl faltered, only for a second. He bared his teeth and looked away. Steve hadn’t seen him without his fangs descended all week. 

“I’ll survive,” he insisted. 

“A pint every two months? That’s pushing it. That’s  _ dangerous _ ,” Steve shot back at him. “You’re going to end up hurting somebody.”

There was a rush of air in Steve’s face, and for a split second, he thought Bucky was going to lash out at him. Instead, he opened his eyes and saw Bucky standing by the door, tense like he was made of stone. 

“I don’t do that,” Bucky growled, and in the blink of an eye, before Steve could even open his mouth to protest, the only sign of him was a vase falling over with the force of the front door slamming shut. 

Then, silence. 

Steve checked the hall, but he knew the search was futile. Bucky wasn’t going to be found unless he wanted to be. After his second call went to his cell phone went straight to voicemail, Steve had no choice but to give up for the time being and crawl back into bed to resume his stare at the wall. Maybe Bucky went to eat, he told himself to negg sleep closer, but even he knew it was a lie.

Sleep was hard to come. He watched the sun rise alone.

It wouldn’t set again until Steve was already back at work. He went as far as keeping his phone on him through his shift should Bucky call, but the only time his phone rang, it was his internet provider trying to get him to bundle a cable package. On more than a few occasions, Steve considered calling Bucky just one more time, or sending a text at the very least, but each time his finger hovered and navigated away. He didn’t have anything to say for himself. 

He wasn’t sorry. He would admit he could have been better at broaching the subject, and that he did regret, but he had a point and he knew it. He stood by what he said. Yet somehow, even that certainty didn’t stop a strange sort of guilt from weighing on his mind. That night’s shift felt like one of his longest. By the time he was letting himself back into his darkened apartment at the end of the night, a shape sitting motionless at his kitchen table was the last thing he expected to see. 

He was used to it enough by now to no longer flinch in fear. Instead, he had only to flick on the light to find Bucky staring back at him with his lemon-rind eyes. He hadn’t gone to feed after all. Steve let out the air lodged in his chest and caught his breath.

“Trying to scare me to death?” Steve asked, nonchalant, as he kicked his shoes off.

He expected Bucky to reply, so when he didn’t, Steve finished lining his shoes up on the mat and looked up. 

Bucky still hadn’t moved or taken his eyes off him. Despite his eyes having been reduced to feline slits for weeks now, something about the stillness with which he watched Steve now only made the sight more unnerving. 

Steve took a steadying breath and pushed the unease aside to join him at the table. 

“I know you’re mad,” he began. “I would be too. It’s just that I’m worried about you, that’s all. You gotta eat, Bucky. I  _ know _ you know that.”

He reached out to put a hand over Bucky’s and found him ice-cold. The lack of blood had turned his skin ashen and his eyes into pits. If the pupils didn’t follow Steve to his chair, he would have looked and felt every bit like a corpse. 

“I do,” Bucky grit out after a tense moment. “Know that. But it’s more complicated than what you think.”

Steve didn’t entirely believe that was true, but he squeezed Bucky’s hand all the same. “Then explain it to me,” he urged him. 

Bucky’s eyes softened somewhat around the edges, though it did little for the primal sense of danger that prickled Steve’s skin. It seemed to take ages for him to find the voice to speak. 

“It’s complicated,” he repeated.

Steve let out a dry laugh. “What isn’t?” he asked, but went on anyway. “Look, I know you work hard not to take too much from me, and I’m sure it’s more difficult for you than I can understand. As much as it’s a pain in my ass, I’m grateful for you doing that. But we made this work before.” He rubbed the top of Bucky’s hand, still icy cold and lying still on the table. The next question stung, not unlike tears in the back of his throat. “It’s because I called you my boyfriend, isn’t it?”

Bucky’s eyes finally flicked down to the table. It was with clear reluctance that he finally shook his head. 

“Would it help if I said it I didn’t mind that you still went out to eat?”

A shake of his head this time. “I don’t want to,” Bucky said. His voice sounded rusty, unused. 

The question hung in the air a long time before Steve asked it. “Do you got much of a choice?”

Bucky ran his teeth over his lip and looked up. He searched Steve face for a while with such an expression of concentration, that Steve was half-afraid he’d break some spell if he didn’t sit quietly and let him. 

“No,” Bucky admitted after a time. “And yes. I could buy blood.”

Steve blinked in surprise, mostly at himself for not thinking of such a thing sooner.

“What’s the catch?” he realized just as quickly. 

Bucky wrinkled his nose and shook his head, turning away again.

“Market’s flooded with dead man’s blood. It’s an easy scam to pull, selling blood from a corpse and passing it off as fresh. Trouble is, a switch-up like that isn’t fun on a good day, but it could kill me when I’m… when I’m like this.” He took a breath, his first during the whole conversation. “I need a supplier I can trust, and I only know one. Unfortunately, I got no way of reaching her with the wolves patrolling the area.”

He looked so solemn and defeated admitting it, but to Steve, the answer couldn’t be more simple. 

“I’ll go for you!” he blurted without a second thought. With the way Bucky sighed, it was exactly the response he had expected.

“I don’t need to remind you how dangerous it is, Steve,” he said, still not quite meeting Steve’s eye. “You’d be a mouse walking into a lion’s den. I wouldn’t be able to go with you. You’d be on your own.”

Steve merely shrugged. “If there was any other option, you wouldn’t have told me about this one,” he pointed out. “Besides, if you trust this supplier, than so do I. Just tell me what I have to do.”

 

***

 

With an hour or so of moonlight left, Steve stepped out onto the street. After checking both ways out of habit, he started with purpose down the block, around the corner, and down into the underground to catch the first of the morning commuter trains to the other side of Brooklyn. He disembarked at the stop Bucky had instructed, and after checking once more over his shoulder, ducked beneath the _Out of Order_ sign that nominally barred the entrance to the men’s restroom. 

At first glance, there was nothing all that unusual about the facility. Blue tiles worked their way across the floor and walls in a zigzagged pattern that had long been swallowed up by grime and graffiti. The mirrors were either smashed or obscured beyond use, and the sinks beneath them were streaked with slime after years of dripping taps. The only working light was above the door, casting the stalls that stretched to the other end in an eerie blackness. 

Steve did his best not to breathe too deeply as he worked his way around the drain to the stall second to last from the end. The first thing he noticed upon shutting the door behind him was the telltale hole had been cut into one wall of the stall at waist height. He eyed it cautiously as he took a seat on the sheet of plywood laid over what remained of the toilet bowl. 

“Peculiar air out there tonight,” he noted aloud, just as Bucky had told him to. 

For a drawn-out moment, all he heard was the banging of the pipes in the walls and the distant sound of a train. Then, just when he thought he’d gotten off at the wrong station or Bucky’s research had failed him, a woman’s voice came from the stall nearest the wall.

“A strange scent on the breeze indeed.”

Steve could hear the soft smile on her lips. She was intrigued, much in the same way a cat was intrigued when it saw movement in the grass. Bucky had warned him that he’d be pegged for a human from the minute he stepped onto the platform. He could only imagine how often someone with a pulse came in here.

He swallowed. 

“Are you Natasha?” he asked, his voice sounding stiff even to his own ears. 

The woman chuckled, nearly soundless. “Some call me that,” she said. There was a rustle on the other side of the stall wall that may have been her crossing her legs. It was too dark to see anything through the hole in the wall, and all Steve could make out from underneath was a single beige boot. “And what can I call you?”

She said it so sweetly, Steve felt like he was walking into a trap just telling her, but he didn’t come this far just to let a vampire think he was scared. 

“Steve,” he replied without hesitation, and with every ounce of conviction he could muster. “I’m here to buy.”

“A little young for a _gory_ hole, aren’t you?” Natasha asked, thoroughly amused. 

Steve pursed his lips and pulled out the bills Bucky had stuffed into his hand. He unfolded then, then rolled them up as tightly as he could and stuck them into the hole. 

A silence lingered before Natasha plucked the bills from his fingers. When she spoke again, her tone had sobered. 

“Planning to have Bucky burn you tonight?”

The question caught Steve off guard. “What?”

“Bucky,” Natasha replied, startling him even more. 

“Yeah, but how did you—”

“You reek of him,” she explained, and there her voice softened again into an amusement Steve was rapidly starting to suspect was a farce. “And I never forget a scent. You’re buying an awful lot.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Steve spat back. Knowing too much about him was one thing, but making assumptions was completely another. His life choices were being judged by a woman on the other side of a vampire-themed glory hole, for crying out loud. 

Natasha only laughed sweetly again, like the blades of a windchime. “If you say so,” she said, and now Steve was sure she was lying by omission with every word. There was another rustle on the other side, and then with what seemed like a deafening clang in all the dark and silence, a sheet pan of IV bags slid under the stall wall. 

Steve frowned as he picked one up to study the familiar label. 

“These are from the Red Cross,” he realized, turning it over in his hands. The contents still held a little warmth. Now he could really feel his temper well up in his throat. “There’s a blood shortage going on. How did you even get this?”

“Please,” Natasha sighed from the other side of the wall. “Did you expect me to sell you blood with the donor still attached?”

“I– well–” Steve hadn’t fully thought through what he had expected. All that had been on his mind was helping Bucky. It never occurred to him who the blood was to come from, much less that he was trading one life for another— for cash. “I can’t take this.” He’d have to think of something else to help Bucky. There had to be another way. 

“Oh, relax,” Natasha interjected, interrupting his train of thought. “I didn’t  _ steal _ them. No, let me rephrase that. I borrowed. The same number of bags that were taken at the blood drive were delivered at the end of the route.”

Steve frowned into the darkness, the bag still sagging in his hands. It was nearing twenty hours since last he slept; the gears in his head could only turn so quickly. “You replaced the blood with something,” he pieced together. “What?”

Natasha shifted in her stall again. He may not have seen it, but he could hear the shrug in her voice. “Blood… given less than willingly. Dead blood, perhaps. Makes no difference to the living who’ll receive it.”

“Perhaps?” Steve echoed. “Where did you get it?”

But the pieces were starting to fall together on their own. The bag in his hands wasn’t yet stamped with the seal that denoted it had passed the standard screening. 

“Aren’t you a righteous one?” Natasha teased from the darkness. “You can’t think of a single person in this city that deserves what’s coming to them? Men, who need to be taught who the real predators are?”

A part of Steve tried to protest. He’d been telling himself for years that he wasn’t in the business of passing judgment. His job was to save any life that came through the emergency room doors, no matter how vile, how cruel, or how depraved. Some nights, that was a heavy burden. Some nights, he would have preferred to just turn his back on those who would be discharged only to spit more vitriol and violence. 

He might not have that luxury at work, but he had it here. 

Without a word, he shouldered his backpack onto the floor and began to fill it. He kept a count as he went, and when all but one IV bag was tucked away, he rifled back through his bag once more to make sure his math was accurate. It was.

“There’s an extra one here,” he told Natasha, and attempted to pass it back under the stall. 

“A freebie for your first time,” she replied without taking it. “Do come back, Steve.  _ Alive _ .”

Something about that last word sent a chill down Steve’s spine. It sounded like an order, so much so that he was suddenly immensely grateful for the wall between them, where neither her eyes nor her glamor could reach him. 

“Thank you,” he replied before he pulled his bag back across his chest and got to his feet. He hoped he didn’t sound as shaken he felt. “Have a good night.”

The only reply he received was the drip of the sink and a flicker of the light. He took his exit as quickly as he could manage.

 

***

 

He didn’t immediately mention Natasha’s comment about infecting him, but that didn't preclude the thought from sitting in the back of his mind like a lead weight. It wasn't that thought hadn't occurred to him earlier. It had, once or twice, much in the same way everyone is every once in a while seized by the intrusive temptation to walk into traffic. Yet, paradoxically, it was speaking the very thing aloud, and moreover, warning him against it, that had so firmly lodged the notion in Steve's mind. 

Because, of course, there was a kicker. Bit by bit, drop by drop, Bucky was stitched into the fabric of his life. He was there when Steve fell asleep and there where he woke up— a reassuring presence, always cool to the touch like the other side of the pillow. When Steve came home dead-eyed with the weight of a stranger’s death on his hands, it was Bucky who was there to hold him until sleep would finally come. Steve had never hesitated to appear at Bucky’s side when he was jerked awake in a cold sweat by some half-remembered nightmare, but he was nevertheless surprised the first time Bucky did the same for him. All the million little ways that Steve had learned to be alone were starting to come undone, and that didn’t escape his notice.

That reality worried him. As the little voice in the back of his head was fond of reminding him, there would always be a time when he was going to find himself alone again. This would have been true for any partner he had, but was doubly true for a vampire. There was no forever here, only buying time. 

He knew this, and yet he couldn’t help himself. A second option was slowly unfolding before him—  one that took him days, then weeks, then nearly a month to build up the courage to consider. All of it came down to this; Bucky made him happy. Softly, ecstatically, irrevocably, intensely, quietly, joyously happy. When he was there and when he wasn't, when he was smiling or when he was in one of his moods, Bucky just made the world whole. Steve couldn't bear to think there might be an end to it. 

Seeing life in the long term had never been in his nature, and seeking happiness for himself even less so. How could he allow it, when he could only ever think in terms of getting to the end of a week, a night, an hour? The years and decades ahead of him had, until recently, only held more of the same. There was no point looking ahead because there was nothing to look forward but the same dreary monotony.

It wasn't the eternity that appealed to him. If anything, the thought of going on forever was what held him back. No, the draw was much more simple, and more selfish. 

He just didn't want this to end. Except that, logically, someday, and maybe soon, it would have to. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the tags.

“Say,” Bucky said one night out of nowhere. They were seated at the table for dinner, if the meal could still be called that when served half past one in the morning. Steve ate and Bucky juggled a napkin ring on his knuckles. “I never did take you to the mountains to see the stars like I said I would, did I? We should go while it’s still warm.”

It was nearing the end of September.

“What, like camping?” Steve asked.

Bucky nodded.

“New Hampshire, right? That’s a hell of a drive,” Steve replied after some consideration. He had to take into account that Bucky couldn’t be out before sundown or out past sunrise, and that included their time in the car. They could leave no earlier than after the sun was fully set, and have to be back indoors before it rose again.

“Don’t worry about that. Leave it to me,” Bucky told him, and by his smile it was clear he had something up his sleeve. “Just set the date and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, but received no answers. He prodded shuffled his broccoli around his plate.

“Did want to see those stars,” he admitted after a quiet moment. It sounded so ludicrously sentimental coming out of his mouth that he couldn’t help but chuckle at himself. “But I haven’t gone camping since I was a cub scout.”

Bucky grinned, wicked and triumphant. He leaned over the table on his elbows.

“How’s two weeks from Monday?”

Steve made a show of not meeting his eyes, as if rearranging his plate took up all of his attention. All the while, the excitement of the proposition bubbled in his gut.

“Should be able to get the night off with that much notice,” he muttered when he couldn’t stand it anymore.

His eyes flicked up to Bucky’s. The matter was settled.

Two days later, camping gear appeared in Steve’s living room. He didn’t question where it had come, since by now this was an established pattern that when he left Bucky to his own devices overnight, things just tended to appear. He took it as an opportunity to re-teach himself how to pitch a tent.

From there, the countdown to the trip began. Any time Steve tried to ask how Bucky planned to get there, he would only get the most cryptic of answers, all of which boiled down to patience. Still, it had been Bucky’s idea, so Steve could do nothing but assume he had a plan.

He had this assumption and _only_ this assumption until the night before they were set to leave. A few hours before dawn, Bucky slipped away and promised to return shortly. Not an hour later, Steve’s phone lit up.

 

> _Bucky: Come down to the curb._

Still not sure what to expect, Steve pulled on his boots and obliged him. Whatever he might have thought Bucky would bring, it wasn’t what he found parked outside under the streetlight.

Bucky offered no explanation for himself but a crooked grin and some jazz hands.

Steve put his hand over his mouth and knit his eyebrows together. He didn’t know if it would be appropriate to laugh.

“Tell me you stole this,” were the first words out of his mouth when he’d pulled himself sufficiently together.  “Please, _please_ tell me you got some way that wasn’t _buying_ it.”

“Okay, I won’t,” Bucky teased. At Steve’s mortified look, he only chuckled. “Don’t worry, I didn’t buy it _recently_.”

Parallel parked before them was a hearse. Black paint was starting to rust and chip around the tires. Steve didn’t know much about cars, but by the looks of this model, it had a good shot of being older than he was. Bucky threw the trunk open to reveal a large, black casket.

“Camping, vampire style,” he declared as he gave the lid a few knocks. “These babies are air-tight once they’re locked. No light gets in. Perfectly safe. You can drive us up in the afternoon and we’ll be there by nightfall.”

“And it’ll make it through the mountains?” Steve asked. Clearly it ran if Bucky was able to get it here, but it looked less than sturdy.

“Should,” Bucky shrugged. “This old girl got me cross-country and back.”

Steve snorted. “ _When_?”

“Not important,” Bucky waved off. Steve shook his head in disbelief. If he was thinking of the same cross-country trip Bucky had told him about a few weeks back, that had been in 1998.

“She’s old but she’s reliable,” Bucky went on. “Gently used. I haven’t driven her in a while but she runs fine.”

Steve studied the vehicle with pursed lips. It’s not like he had any better suggestions. “Well, if it’ll run,” he decided, though he still didn’t sound certain.

Nevertheless, with Bucky’s help, he had the trunk loaded with their supplies within the hour. In went the tent, the food, the camping gear. And then, last of all, the vampire, sprawled languidly in the plush interior of the casket with his head by the door and his feet pointing front, just as the sun was starting to brighten the horizon. Steve kissed him farewell and latched the lid. Perhaps it was the late hour, but the whole thing felt surreal.

“Comfortable?” he asked. It was a stupid question. Bucky didn’t even need to breathe.

What he got in response was the first five notes of the Shave and a Haircut. Smiling to himself, he knocked back the last two.

“I’m off to get some sleep,” he added. “We’re pulling out at noon whether you’re ready or not.”

 

***

 

Steve kept his word.

The old hearse took him a few tries to rumble back to life, but aside from the occasional clang from somewhere in the radiator, she ran smoothly as long as he kept his speed under 60 miles per hour. It meant he was forced to spend the entire ride in the rightmost lane, anxiously tapping his fingers on the wheel as other cars sped past and around him, some going as far as blaring their horns, but it was the price to pay to keep the ancient car from shuddering so hard, he worried it would fall to pieces right there on the road.

Bucky slept soundly the whole way, or at least stayed totally quiet, which was no great surprise. In daylight, he always slept like— well, like the dead. He seemed to be able to stay up without issue, but once he was knocked out, he was out for good. Getting him up before the sun fully set was always a lost cause.

The radio stations kept fuzzing in and out every hundred miles or so, which was to be expected. Finding a new one to tune to helped break up the drive. The interstate snaked through Connecticut, straight up through Massachusetts, then wound its way along the river that marked the border between New Hampshire and Vermont.

It was a dull drive, but at least it was easy. Once the GPS herded Steve onto the off-ramp though, all bets were off. The cell signal slowly dwindled to nothing until even the GPS signal was lost, and the roads narrowed down and down until Steve had to slow to 20 mph to hug the side of a cliff face. When the road widened again and he finally turned into the state park proper, even the pavement promptly turned to dirt.

Steve had a sneaking suspicion no one would take kindly to seeing a man climb out of a casket, so he passed the turn-off to camper parking and kept driving until he found a small gravel lot at the start of a hiking trail.

There were a few other cars there with him. Steve parked as far away from them as he could, and when he stepped out to stretch the long drive out of his neck and shoulders, he took the chance to peer into the darkened windows to make sure he and Bucky were indeed alone.

All told though, he'd timed their arrival well. The sun had dipped down below the trees at least an hour ago, and the sky was finally starting to darken— not orange, the way it did in the city, but a deep, deep blue. There were already more stars in the sky than he was used to.

Steve threw open the back doors of the hearse and gave the lid of the casket a few soft knocks.

"Up and at 'em, sleeping beauty," he said. "We're here."

The casket groaned. When Steve got the latches undone and the lid lifted, he found Bucky his arms thrown over his face in protest.

"I'm awake," Bucky promised, though he neither looked nor sounded it. His voice came out thick with sleep, and his hair was a wreck from the drive it had endured.

The look of him so sleep-ruffled swelled something deep and fond behind Steve’s ribs. He pressed a quick kiss to what he could reach of Bucky's forehead and began to pull out their camping gear. Maybe it was the extra noise, or maybe it was just the idea of Steve doing something without help, god forbid, that got Bucky moving. Steve stepped back to let him free, only to find himself folding his arms over his chest when Bucky used that advantage to block him from unloading anything else.

"I can carry more than this," he swore when he saw that Bucky indeed planned to carry all that remained in the back— tent, sleeping bags, food and all. It left Steve with only his own backpack.

Bucky turned to him and grinned. "So can I," he said. "You can lock up."

He started up the path.

Steve just barely resisted the impulse to stick his tongue out at the back of his head. Instead, he did as suggested and caught up to Bucky waiting for him at the mouth of the trail.

By now, the trees had been reduced to shadows. Steve tried his best to guess how many stars there were poking out from between the leaves, it was already a useless exercise.

"That's nothing," Bucky assured him as he handed him the flashlight. "Wait 'til we get to the outlook."

They set off. Steve didn't bother to ask how far it would be, although, after the first forty minutes, he was starting to wish he had. Back in the city, he had the opportunity to walk plenty. He'd thought hiking wouldn't be all that different, but he'd evidently forgotten to take into account the fact that they would be walking in the dark, on rocky, craggy ground, uphill. Much to his dismay, he had to halt the hike twice to take his inhaler. Even then, he wasn't left with much breath to carry a conversation. He was still exhausted and sore from the drive, and now he felt both soaked in sweat and near to shivering in the October air.

After an hour, they turned off the main trail and started off into the trees. There was no path to guide them, but Bucky seemed sure in where they were going. Steve, meanwhile, had no choice but to slowly come to the conclusion that no view could possibly be worth this. He kept his prediction to himself as they picked past shrubs and fallen trees in the pitch black, ever working their way uphill.

Bucky was clearly excited, wavering between forging on ahead at top speed and stopping to wait for Steve to catch up. When asked, he chalked it up the flashlight interfering with his night vision, but Steve was pretty sure he was only saying that for his benefit. They continued on like this ten minutes more before Bucky came to a halt at the crest of the next hill as he always did. This time, however, he held up a finger to bring Steve to a stop, too. It was hard to read his expression in the dark, but his grin and his child-like anticipation were clear in his voice.

"We're here," he said, herding Steve a step or two back for good measure. "Close your eyes."

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it at the last moment. Instead, he made sure to roll his eyes before he complied. With no streetlights, the darkness behind his eyelids was absolute.

"Wait right there," he Bucky whispered somewhere in the vicinity of his ear. "Don't move."

"Better hurry up, or I'll fall asleep standing," Steve hissed back, but there was no venom in it. Bucky’s excitement was becoming infectious, rekindling the hope that all this had to be worth the trouble.

In reply, he let out that soft little huff that told Steve he was smiling without his needing to see it, followed shortly by a tug at Steve’s backpack. He let Bucky slip it off his shoulders to humor him, and as the weight disappeared, so too did any sign of Bucky— not a sound, not a warmth, not a breath.

There was a faint chill in the air. Now that the noise of his own feet on the dried leaves wasn't so deafening, Steve could, for the first time, appreciate the silence of the forest. There was neither traffic, nor sirens, nor people shouting or car alarms going off in the distance— just the soft chirping of insects and the rustling of the leaves far overhead. It felt alien, like stepping into another world. He inhaled and tasted damp leaves and earth.

"Keep your eyes closed," he heard Bucky whisper from somewhere nearby. Cool fingers slipped into his hand to take his flashlight, and a moment later, those same fingers slipped into his palms. A soft tug urged him forward. "Watch your step."

He talked Steve forward around rocks and roots for the first few steps, after which the ground leveled out and there was no more need for warnings. Steve felt tall grass brushing past his waist. The earth here was lumpy and uneven, giving a little with each step, but there was nothing for him to trip over, and he got used to the odd footing soon enough.

"Almost there," Bucky promised, and then, "okay, stop." He let go of Steve's hands. "Open your eyes.”

At first, all he saw was the dark shape of Bucky, standing before him in an open field. Past his shoulder, he noted that he'd managed to pitch the tent already, and with what must have been lightening speed, stomped out a clearing in the grass around it. But it was beyond all that where his eyes were drawn, up and up, over black outlines of the treetops, and sight like nothing he had ever seen.

The full arc of the sky was stretched out above them, and splattered across it like hapless paint, were more stars that Steve could ever have dreamed possible. He'd seen pictures of the Milky Way before, of course, but nothing could have prepared him for how its full glory could dwarf the earth itself. There must have been more stars than windows in the city— in any city, in every city. More stars than people, more stars than numbers could count. He turned in place and still he could not see all of it at once. It was dizzying. It left no room for air.

Distantly, Steve was aware of Bucky taking his hand again. He tore his eyes away from the sky just enough to keep his feet under himself as he followed Bucky to the clearing around their tent. It wasn't until he was already moving to sit down in the spot Bucky tugged him that he realized their sleeping bags were laid out, side by side. A part of Steve wanted achingly, desperately to lay down, but the grass around them was too tall yet, and he couldn't bear to shrink the sky down when there was just so much of it to take in.

Bucky had no such reservations. He curled up beside him, and then, as if thinking better of it, rearranged himself so his head lay pillowed in Steve's lap. Steve's fingers wove into his hair by their own accord.

"It's something, huh?" Bucky whispered after some unknowable span of time had passed.

Steve nodded, slowly at first, before he could tear his attention away fully to look down, at Bucky's face, framed by silver moonlight and his eyes dancing with stars. Lit up this way, his jawline could cut glass.

Steve couldn’t tear his eyes from him any easier than he could from the cosmos above them.

"It sure is."

Bucky smiled and took Steve's hand from his head to press it his cheek instead. His eyes fell shut when he pressed himself into it, chasing the warmth.

"There were more stars visible in the city back in my day," he admitted softly. "But it still sure was something when I saw all this for the first time."

"I bet," Steve breathed. "I’d remember this for a hundred years, too."

His eyes were drawn back even as his thumb traced small circles over the angle of Bucky's cheekbone. The expanse above was enough to knock the wind out of him even on a second look, but this time, he only lingered long enough to take a deep breath to fight back the tide rising in his chest.

There was that anxiety again, that fear that the future was larger and more vast than he could comprehend, and the worry that came with contemplating that he might not have to face it alone.

He looked back at Bucky again, already searching for the words to explain everything he didn't know to say, but was surprised this time to find Bucky's eyes open, watching him. There was something unreadable in his face— not quite happy, not quite melancholy. Steve had caught him with this expression before.

"What is it?" he asked.

Bucky merely shook his head, as he always did, but this time, his answer was different.

"Later."

Steve blinked. "Later?"

"I don't want to talk about it now," Bucky explained. His voice was soft, but there was a crease forming between his brows. Something about the way he said it jostled the worry that Steve had so carefully kept tucked behind his ribs.

Before he could protest, Bucky cut off the possibility of further questions by sitting up.

"I'll get a fire going," he suggested, and something in Steve stuttered.

He caught him by the wrist before he could try.

"Wait," he said, and it wasn't until Bucky's eyes locked on him again that he realized he didn't have anything prepared to say. So he said, "stay a little longer. Here. With me. I'm not even cold."

They both knew that last part was a lie; Steve was close to shivering. Bucky wore that expression again, but he had no excuses this time, for better or for worse. He just said, "okay," and lay down.

Steve lay down with him. He could see less of the sky, but he didn't care. Beside him, Bucky wore a pensive expression that bordered on confrontational. He lay stiff, his eyes fixed on the stars. Steve’s own heart was hammering for some reason he couldn't identify, or maybe he could, and he just didn't want to admit it.

The worst part was, he couldn't even hide it. His racing heart, his ragged breath, everything was bound to be amplified a hundredfold to a vampire's ears. He did all he could to stuff it all down, but he knew it wasn't enough as soon as Bucky's hand found his and gave it a short squeeze.

And then Bucky said the worst thing he could have said, in the worst way he could have said. It sounded like an apology.

He said, "you know I love you, right?"

It was the first time the topic had come up, and still, Steve knew. He knew. Of course he knew, but his throat wouldn't allow him the dignity of saying it. All he could do was nod and hold his breath to brace himself.

"So then you have to understand," Bucky continued. "I only want what's best. I want what's best _for you_. You know that. You know it can't be me."

Steve expected the admission to be some kind of relief. He'd thought the tension would leave the air and let him breathe again, but it was no such thing. On the contrary, something in him tightened viciously— not hurt, but, of all things, angry.

"Bullshit," he snarled under his breath.

"Don't be stupid about this, Steve," Bucky said a little louder. He sat up. "We can't go on like this forever. You deserve… don’t look at me like that. You deserve to grow old with someone. To live a normal life. I'm not going to be the one to take that away from you, for Christ’s sake."

His face was twisted into something horrible, and under any other circumstances, Steve would have felt bad enough to back off. Instead, he sat up, too. Whether he wanted to believe it or not, this conversation had been a long time coming.

"Are you going to ask me if that's what I want?" he demanded.

Bucky sucked in a breath through his nose, but despite his efforts, his expression still looked torn.

"Steve–"

"Are you?" Steve demanded. He already knew the answer, but he wanted Bucky to say it. More than that, he wanted to get under his skin. Bucky had a knife in his gut and he was twisting it, and that sick little voice in the back of Steve's head that always got him in trouble wasn't going to let him get away with it without returning it in kind.

He got what he wanted, one way or another.

"There's a difference between what you want now and what you're going to regret when you're older," Bucky told him, and now there was an edge of annoyance working its way into his tone, too. "Believe me, Steve, I've been through this with my old friends. You're not gonna feel the same way when people start mistaking you for my grandpa. You're just not."

Steve crossed his arms over his chest.

“You sure sound like _my_ grandpa with that _‘_ _you’ll think differently when you’re older_ _’_ talk,” he shot back, even as he was sure Bucky had a point. He hated himself for this temper, even has he did nothing to quell it.

“You’ll feel different about that, someday, too” Bucky promised, with that soft, world-weary certainty of his. Steve both loved and hated him for it. It calmed him by degrees without his even realizing.

"Or," he began, then cut himself off, then thought better of it again. His eyes darted to Bucky, and he willed them to stay there. "Or there's always the other option,” he reminded him. It was the only way he could see forward that wasn’t the end of everything. “I don't grow old."

It was almost a question, more a suggestion than an argument. The implication hung like static in the air. A year ago, the suggestion that he would choose immortality willingly wound have been laughable. Now, however, his mind was nothing if not made up.

"No," Bucky growled back. The tension in the air broke with a snap. He was on his feet in the blink of an eye. "Absolutely not. Don't you– don't you dare ask that of me."

His eyes were livid all of a sudden, his hands curled into fists. Even his shoulders shook with outrage. He seemed so much on the precipice of taking a step closer that Steve climbed to his feet with caution, too.

"I'm not going to be the one responsible for your death, Steve," Bucky went on, now nearly a whisper. "You have your whole life ahead of you. Stop this. I'm not talking about it anymore."

Even as Steve watched, the rage in his eyes bled into pleading. The sight was nearly enough for Steve to take back his conviction to keep this fight going. He would have even, if he didn't still have a left question hanging.

"So, then, what?" he asked, dropping his arms limp at his sides. "This whole thing was… was it always a fling to you?”

For a frightening heartbeat, he actually let himself believe it. The next assured him otherwise, and the next, and the next. It was _Bucky_ who had come back after their first meeting, _Bucky_ who had asked him on a date, _Bucky_ who had moved in with him and stopped hunting others at his own expense. There was no way it had all meant nothing.

"Yeah," Bucky cut him off. His face was flat. "Yeah, it was.”

Steve stared at him for a second, then two. It could have been an eternity there, waiting for him to crack a smile and declare he was only kidding, but his face stayed a mask of resolute obfuscation.

He was daring Steve to argue, but Steve felt suddenly like a deflated balloon. He balled his fists to keep them from shaking, but he could do no such thing with his voice, so for the longest time, his glare was all he had. For all that time, Bucky never faltered. He just waited, and waiting, and waited, for Steve to either contradict him or,

or,

"Okay," Steve croaked. "Okay, fine. My mistake."

He shrugged and turned away before his shaking hands could betray him, but there was nothing out in the field for him but darkness. Even the infinity of stars above didn't hold much luster. He wiped his sweaty palms on the fronts of his pants and took a breath, knowing full well that Bucky would be able to hear any sign of a hitch or a sniffle. He didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction.

Instead, he put himself to work rolling up his sleeping bag.

"I'm leaving," he announced without looking up to see if Bucky was listening, or even still there. He had his way of vanishing without a sound, but right now, Steve couldn't bring himself to be impressed. "You can come with me or not, but I'm taking the car."

Silence followed. Steve finished rolling and tying the sleeping bag before he bothered to look up. Bucky was, in fact, still there, and resolutely not looking at Steve either as he took down the tent. Steve took that as his answer.

They didn't speak the rest of the time packing up camp. By the time they were through, the fight in Steve's chest had been reduced to embers, leaving behind a void that made it hard to take in air.

No one had ever made it out to be a good idea to date a vampire. As a matter of fact, Steve had expressively avoided that detail with anyone who asked because he knew exactly the kind of backlash he would receive. Humans only hung around the undead for two reasons: glamour, or lust for immortality. Anyone who knew Steve would think it was the former, and if Bucky was diluting himself into thinking it was the latter, maybe the past few months really didn't mean anything after all.

Steve shouldered his bag and tucked the sleeping bag under his arm. He checked to make sure the car keys were still in his pocket before he picked up the flashlight again and glanced around. Bucky was nearly finished packing, too. He watched him work for a moment, wrestling with whether to offer a hand, before he turned away back to the treeline.

His path through the tall grass was still evident, and from what he could remember, it was a straight shot down the hill back to the path. He knew he would be slow to pick his way down the incline, and since the thought of Bucky waiting for him in overbearing silence was enough to make his stomach roil, he set off without bothering to see the tent had been put away fully.

Bucky would catch up, he knew, which was just what ultimately happened not halfway down the hill. He still refused to look Steve in the eye, but fell in step infuriatingly beside all the same. Climbing down one particularly large ridge, he even had the audacity to hold out a hand for Steve, which Steve ignored on principle, even if it cost him a hole over one knee.

Still, Bucky said nothing, and Steve refused to be the one to speak first just as resolutely. So it went for an hour or more, until the trail began to open up and the parking lot came into sight.

"I can drive," Bucky had to gall to say as they stepped out into the open.

"I'm driving," Steve hissed back.

In truth, he dreaded even the thought of getting back behind the wheel after the hours he’d spent there all afternoon, but his dignity wasn't going to allow him anything less than squaring his shoulders and marching past Bucky to the back of the car.

They loaded the trunk, still with nary a look exchanged between them, and then Steve climbed in behind the wheel. He hadn't given any consideration to where Bucky would sit, and so found himself taken aback for a moment when he climbed into the passenger's seat beside him. Steve briefly entertained the idea of telling him to climb in back, but that would involve speaking, and he much preferred to just wrestle with the ignition until the engine finally caught.

Then, without preamble, he pulled onto the road and started the hours long haul to New York.

Perhaps he may have been a little impatient with the pace he set on the small back roads, but it was nothing that should have warranted a comment. Bucky, evidently, had other opinions.

"Maybe you should slow down."

It was quiet, still just a whisper. Steve shot a glare at him when he could spare his eyes from the road, and took the next turn a little harder. Bucky's hand flew to the handle above the passenger window.

"Fine," he growled, and at first it seemed he would leave it at that. Then he added under his breath, "be that way. Clearly, you know better, _Steve_."

Just for that, Steve pressed the accelerator a little harder. The car gave a faint jolt, and creaked all the more around the next turn.

"Steve," Bucky said again, louder, and this time it was a warning.

Steve's grip tightened on the steering wheel. There was a fire in his belly again, stoked by the edge that was working its way into Bucky's voice. It was better than his indifference, and that was all that mattered. He pushed the car faster, swerving into the empty left lane to make it around the bend.

"I get that you're pissed, okay?" Bucky growled over the sound of the wind whipping past the windows. "If you want to talk, let's fucking talk."

But Steve didn't have anything to say to him. Besides, it was paramount that he keep his eyes on the road. They were nearing the area where the track narrowed— a sheer cliff on one side, a drop into a dark abyss on the other.

He kept his foot on the accelerator. Bucky sucked in a breath as the next turn yanked them both sharply sideways in their seats.

"Steve, can you–"

He never got to finish his sentence, or if he did, Steve never heard it. It may have been a function of Steve's limited human senses, or slowed reaction time, or any combination of the two. What happened next came to him in flashes. One sharp curve, a second pair of high beams, a third hand on the wheel. He didn't remember if he was yanking the wheel sideways to avoid something or just to wrench it out of Bucky's grasp. He didn't remember if the car tipped sideways before he heard the crunch of gravel or after. He couldn't recall if their of them even had time to cry out, only that before either got the chance, for one crystalline second, they hung, suspended, weightless. And then the car fell out from under them and into the ravine below.

In the seconds that followed, the rules that governed the universe came undone. There was no up or down, only the twisting darkness where the force of colliding tree trunks could come from any and all directions at once. The chaos was not only outside but within, as tents and bags and an entire, adult coffin jostled loose inside the same confined space.

The rumors were exaggerated. It wasn't Steve's life that flashed before his eyes. For once, he might have actually preferred that to the thoughts of Bucky that wrenched themselves from his memory. They flew by too quick to be anything particular— Bucky cooking, Bucky laughing, Bucky asleep on the couch.

Bucky, about to die, at Steve’s doing and with Steve still mad at him.

If all those years in the emergency department had taught Steve anything, it was go with his gut when time was of the essence. Did instinct make the right decisions? Not always, but right now all he could do was swallow down the instinct to freeze, and do the only thing it seemed that he could in that situation.

Minimize damage, shield Bucky's head. He didn't think it through further than that before he unbuckled his seatbelt and leapt on him. He might not be able to _say_ he was sorry before it was all over, but he could do this, and it would have to be enough. Bucky would understand that he was always the more likely of the two of them to walk away from this.

The world exploded into broken glass and pain, and then, with the harshest jolt yet, icy water. The blackness that descended on them was so dark and so deep, it seemed to stretch for an eternity.

 

***

 

The first sound that reached Steve at the bottom of it all was the pulse of his own blood in his ears. He winced in anticipation of a pain that seemed to press in from all sides, but it didn't close in on him as he expected. It just hung, suspended, like bated breath.

When he opened his eyes, there was nothing around him but darkness. He may as well have kept them shut.

"S–Steve?"

Bucky's hands pressed to his cheeks and swept his forehead, cold and maybe damp. His voice echoed strangely here in the dark. Steve blinked and still saw nothing. There was something dripping nearby.

"Bucky?" he rasped. The pull to draw in air again was like sucking a milkshake too thick to drink. Worse, he couldn't quite lift his hand to find Bucky's face in return. "What–?"

Bucky touched Steve arm as if through novocaine. He could have squeezed hard enough to break bone, and Steve wouldn’t have known it.

"Steve," he managed. "I'm– I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Why would you– Steve. Steve." His hands were in Steve's hair. "Stay with me, buddy. I’m here. Don’t go."

The echoes overlapped and enveloped each other, drowning out the words. Steve was distantly aware of the last simmering tendrils of anger, but it, like everything else, felt like it was reaching him at the bottom of some great chasm. It just didn’t seem all that important.

"The car..." he remembered, but to say more he had to inhale again, and that took time. Bucky was quicker.

"We're safe," he promised. "I pulled us out. We got shelter. We're– I'm okay.  You're..." he let out a hacking, startled sort of sound, both a sob and a sick sort of chuckle. "I'm so fucking sorry, Steve."

Bucky's hair spilled over Steve’s face. If he’d buried his face in his chest, Steve didn’t feel it either. He couldn’t feel much of anything— not his chest, and certainly not his legs. The thought didn’t sit well with him, so he pushed it aside. Pain buzzed all around, but didn’t touch him.

"...not dead yet," he finished on Bucky's behalf, with what smile he could muster.

Bucky sobbed again. “ _That's_ debatable.” His hair lifted away again and he cleared his throat. "I... I had to dose you. Just a little. Just enough to keep your heart beating," he admitted, hands smoothing the hair from Steve's face again. "Steve, I'm so, so sorry. I should have let you talk back there. I know I'm the last person you want to talk to right now, and I don't blame you, but I can't decide this part of it for you. You have to tell me what to do."

Steve frowned as he tried to parse out the meaning. "Do what?"

"I can turn you," Bucky replied like it repulsed him.  "Into a vampire, like me. Right now. It'll hurt like hell. It'll be days and days of agony. It might not even work. But if I don't try, that's it. The venom wears off and you're gone. Please don't go, Steve. I'm sorry. Please. I can't bear to lose you again. I always thought being by your side when you go would be easier than having to find out a decade too late, but I can’t do it. I just can’t do it."

 _Eternity_ , that's what Bucky was asking of him.

Steve blinked again, and this time, outlines formed in his vision. Bucky’s shape hovered over him, a blurred shadow. He couldn’t quite make out his features, but a smile found its way onto Steve's face despite himself.

"I'm picking up some mixed signals," he just had the energy to scoff, fondly. “First you tell me to go, now you want me stay...”

Bucky let out a wet chuckle. "Oh, forget the breakup," he hiccuped. "I never meant a word of it. I only wanted you to live a long life with someone that could make you happy, Steve. You have to know it killed me that it couldn't have been me."

Steve's chest felt light as a balloon. In any other circumstances, he would have kissed Bucky right there with all he had on just the chance to prove him wrong, no matter how much Bucky's eyes and nose were leaking. Forgiveness was not even a matter of debate.

Things being what the were though, all he could do was snort.

"Not as much as I killed me, evidently," he retorted.

It didn't get him the laugh he hoped for. Bucky's knuckles traced his cheek.

"Whichever you choose, I'm right here by your side for the rest of your life," he promised. "You can't get rid of me."

Steve had never seen Bucky cry, not openly. Sometimes, in his deepest sleep, he would sniffle and sob, but the tears so audible in his voice now were altogether new. It tore his heart in two. Steve wished so badly just for the chance to squeeze his hand one last time.

"Then you can't get rid of me, either," he decided. "Do it."

The next thing he knew, his face was clasped in Bucky's hands and he was kissing him, hard. It was the only fitting way for them to say goodbye before they plunged themselves into the unknown. Done wrong, there was no question that this could easily be the end of them both. Steve had witnessed as much himself. Vampire transformations failed, often. Humans just died sometimes, and the vampire turning them, well, they had to give up all the blood they had and more. That could be just as lethal. With the way Bucky kissed him, Steve was sure he knew that, too.

He pulled away as quickly as he had descended. Steve had no time to ask before he found Bucky's wrist pressed to his mouth instead. The vein was already open for him, oozing from a row of punctures. Even from his first taste, Steve could tell that what flowed from it wasn't blood any longer.

Whatever it was, it moved like sludge and tasted of putrefaction— a slurry of decaying moss and rotten flesh. Steve retched when the first of it slipped down his throat, but the wrist only pressed down harder, and cold, slick fingers forced his head back by the jaw to ease the swallowing. He coughed, but the muscles in his chest weren't what they used to be. His options were to swallow it or let it drown him, so he gulped past the urge to gag again and took the rancid fluid as it came.

It burned the entire way down, and in his gut, it only burned worse. He gasped for air around it, and still it flowed without any signs of stopping. The burn turned painful, then searing. It was a fire running down his nerves, consuming his muscles, igniting his bones.

"I know," he heard Bucky say softly from some great distance above him. "I know, it hurts. You're doing great, Steve."

He must have said it to be reassuring, but Steve only knew how to take such things as a challenge. A new kind of flame flared in his chest. He opened his mouth a little wider, lifted his head as much as he could, and sucked the sludge down with a determination only spite could draw out of him while his insides shriveled and burned.

There was no knowing how long it was before the wrist pulled away, but when it did, he collapsed back, panting to fight back nausea. The pain only grew with each labored movement.

"Didn't hurt a bit," he gritted with the last fringes of his consciousness, then promptly passed out before Bucky had a chance to contradict him.

 

***

 

It felt like he'd barely slipped off before he was being awoken by that taste of that sewage again. He couldn't lift his head this time to take it. It was coming quicker than the last dose, and there seemed to be more of it.

His whole body was a live wire. Every nerve ending raged and raved. This time, there was no end to it. Even the blackness of sleep couldn't spare him.

 

***

 

 

No sound the next time, and no taste the next. No more rocky floor beneath his shoulders nor lips pressed to his forehead when it was through. He was floating, shedding pieces of himself, less and less left with each passing hour.

 

 

***

 

 

One by one, his organs ruptured.

 

 

***

 

 

His bones cracked to powder.

 

 

***

 

 

 

His skin shredded and turned inside out.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Somewhere on the other side of this, Bucky would be waiting. On the other side of his body, on the other side of his mind, on the other side of the temptation of sleep within sleep.

In this black, empty abyss, that was all he had. There was only one problem.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

_Steve?_

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, there was just not enough of him left to carry through.

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

The light was so bright, he thought at first that it was morning. Then his eyes opened.

He was in a cavern. It was a small one, no bigger than the handicapped stall in a public restroom, and he could see the mouth of it from where he lay. The light streaming in was too pale to be any sunlight he had ever seen. 

Steve sat up. Almost as soon as he was aware of the light, he was aware, too, of the  _ smell _ . It was stale sweat and meat gone off, mixed in with vomit and just about any other unpleasant thing that could come out of a human body. He lifted his arm to press his sleeve over his nose only to find that he had no sleeve left to speak of. Memories of some forgotten nightmare flitted through his head, but he could look down at himself and see that he was unharmed. 

More than unharmed, really.

And, in spite of the smell here, he was  _ famished _ . Even in the weeks after his mother died, when he had to skip meals just to pay the rent, he had never been this hungry. Two things were for certain; he had to get out of here, and he had to find something to eat. 

Steve began to climb to his feet, only to crack his head hard against the ceiling of the cave. It had looked a lot higher up from the ground. He rubbed the newly sore spot on his head and glared at the rocky overhang, before his eyes fell on the spot where he had been lying. Where his head had been, various grasses had been laid out in a braided wreath. The stalks had been twisted together, forming crude, arched patterns. They were lovely, if a little disheveled by his tossing around. 

He frowned at it for a moment before he remembered.

"Bucky?" he asked toward the entranceway.

No response.

Careful not to stand to his full height this time, he picked his way outside. It was there he found the source of the light— not the sun, but the brightest moon he had ever seen. It was only a crescent, but it spilled out over the wooded landscape, showing every tree and root with perfect clarity. 

There had been the lightest dusting of snow, it seemed, but standing out there, Steve felt no cold. His bare feet on the frosted grass were as unbothered as if he wore boots meant for the arctic. 

He didn't have much time to wonder about it before the scent of the cave cleared away with the next breeze and a new smell caught his attention. This one was faint, but it drew him nevertheless to a spot on the dirt not far from the mouth of the cavern. His nose told him it was blood, or what was left of it. It was dried to flecks now. 

Not far from this droplet was another, then another further on. It was a whole trail of blood splatters, leading out into the wood. Someone had been injured here, Steve realized. Days ago, maybe more, but the spots of blood were small. There was a chance whoever was on the other end could still be alive. 

"Bucky?" Steve called into the night.

The forest was far from still, but Bucky's voice was not among the cacophony of chatter and rustling. It was so odd. Steve was used to snow sucking all the sound of the world, but the leaves and the animals sounded louder than ever. 

A second glance around revealed that the cave he had been in was at the base of a hulking stone, the tallest part of which reached so high into the air, Steve was certain he'd be able to pick his way back here if he needed to. He didn’t want to ever think about setting foot inside again, but he couldn’t bring himself to go far either, with Bucky still unaccounted for. 

Doing his best to memorize the landscape, he started off to find the blood's source, but he didn’t need to go far. Just over the next hill, the trees parted around a lake that took up the better part of a small valley. The moon shimmered faintly over its still surface, and above, the stars were once more laid out in a breathtaking display. As ridiculous as it seemed, there may have even been more of them than before. 

What really caught Steve's attention though were the trees on the edge of the slope. One had been felled completely, and two more on either side were splintered and shattered. Judging by how fresh the wood looked, the damage had been recent. The grass that stretched beneath the damaged trees had been marred with deep gashes, as if some large object had torn through the treeline and slid along the earth into the water.

This, too, appeared recent, though not so recent as to have disturbed either the freshly fallen snow nor the thin sheen of ice on the water’s surface. So a few days maybe, just like the blood droplets, which he could now see led to a larger stain at the edge of the pond. 

Steve looked at the damage, then back the way he'd come. The rock that was his shelter was still clearly visible.

He could remember a car, a fall, the shock of cold water. He could remember an unearthly pain. The pieces just needed time to slide together. 

He'd been following the blood trail backward. The blood had been his. 

This fact ought to have scared him, but in the moment, all that mattered was what had become of Bucky since.  There was no second set of footprints in the snow, but flakes still fell lightly, and the layer on the ground was so thin, it couldn’t have started more than an hour ago. A lack of tracks didn’t have to mean anything. Bucky may still be close, if he was alive enough to walk to begin with. 

Steve cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted Bucky's name with all his might. The syllables reverberated around the valley until they distilled into a hum. The chattering and rustling of wildlife, which had ceased at the sudden noise, picked up anew. 

Steve swore under his breath. Twin needs tore at his insides— to find Bucky, and, god help him, to find something to eat. The latter was so pressing, he couldn’t help but be tempted to put it first. 

All the food they'd had with them was in the car, and the car, more than likely, was at the bottom of a pond. But what choice did he have? Steve's mouth didn't exactly water at the thought of waterlogged jerky, but he was willing at least to entertain the idea while he picked his way to the water's edge. 

He got as far as wading in to his knees before he realized what he was doing. The water was deep, freezing, and dark. It wasn’t the cold that bothered him so much, but what was his plan, exactly? Dive until he found something edible? 

The hunger was clearly getting to him. Cursing himself again, he began to retrace his steps back to shore when the sound of shattering ice behind him stopped him dead.

He turned in time to see Bucky breaking through the surface. Between his starved eyes and gaunt cheeks, he should by all rights have looked wretched, but at the sight of him, Steve's face lit up with such relief, he forgot to start breathing again.

Bucky didn't look nearly as pleased to see him. At first he looked angry, but that quickly melted into nothing short of shock. If there was any blood left in him, it promptly drained from his face.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" Steve called as Bucky swam closer to get his feet under him. When he stood, it was only too obvious that he had dropped fifty pounds at least. His clothes clung in all wrong, and even his skin looked loose and sallow. 

He was still the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen, living or dead. 

"I thought you were gone," Steve continued. 

Bucky let out a puff of air, incredulous.

"I thought you were smaller," he breathed. And then he launched himself at him.

Steve didn’t stop to ponder if he’d meant to hug or tackle him. Whatever had happened, it had slowed Bucky down significantly. He was so used to Bucky practically vanishing from one spot to reappear in another, that he actually laughed when all he had to do was open his arms and take a step forward to catch him. The momentum spun them around, sending water flying. Steve laughed again when he realized Bucky's head only came up to his chin.

"Shut up," Bucky huffed, his nose still buried Steve's neck. "You were dead. Your heart stopped days ago. I thought it was all for nothing. I thought I lost you all over again."

"You thought I was dead?" Steve repeated. He slid his hands over Bucky's back. The wreath of grasses by his head in the cave made sense all of a sudden, sort of.

"You know people usually get their loved ones _flowers_ when they die."

Bucky stepped back, his expression still twisted in disbelief, and socked Steve on the arm. It was barely more than a tap.

"It was the only thing around that didn't have pollen," he grumbled as he resolutely refused to meet Steve's eye. "Not that you were breathing, but, still. I was going to come back with something better. Once I, you know, figured out how."

He motioned limply to the water behind him, more or less confirming what Steve already knew. They wouldn’t be driving home. 

Steve didn't spare it a glance though. He was still caught up in the fact of his own passing. It was such a strange concept to consider from a point of retrospect, like it was one more milestone to his existence. But here he was. Here they both were. 

"Hey," he said softly.

Bucky looked up, albeit barely. His eyelashes clung together, white with moonlight.

"Sorry about the fight back there," Steve whispered. "I made a pretty big ass of myself."

Bucky scoffed. "Yeah, what else is new?" he said, but he was starting to smile again. "I was an idiot too. Safe to say we got what was coming to us."

Steve wanted to reach out and pull Bucky back into his arms again just as much as he wanted to never take his eyes off him for a second again. He wound up splitting the difference by clapping Bucky on the shoulder and giving it a squeeze. 

"Yeah, stuck with you for the rest of eternity?" he replied. "What a chore."

And that, finally, got Bucky to chuckle. It was the look of joy breaking through on his face that ultimately sapped the last of Steve’s self control not to swoop in and kiss him, but for once, that was the right thing to do. Bucky's laughter was swallowed up in his mouth and just like that, they entangled in one another again, in a pond, at the bottom of a ravine in the first snowfall of winter.

They were dead, but it didn’t matter. They’d hitch a ride back to the city one way or another, since after all, it seemed a little rude of Steve not to at least call into work to let them know he’d come down with a slight case of death. Or else, they could stay here, and eke out a life in the wilderness. Or they could get on the road and never stop. 

The details didn’t matter when they had each other and the rest of time to figure it out. It was the first night of the rest of their afterlives, and the end was nowhere in sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Viola!
> 
> Huge thanks again to [Choasdraws](http://chaosdraws.tumblr.com) for the art and [VenusMonstrosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenusMonstrosa) for the beta. These days, you can mostly find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/stevebuckynat).


End file.
